54 dead in three days of clashes in Yemen’s Aden: health official

At least 54 people have been killed in three days of fighting between Shiite rebels and rival militia in Yemen’s main southern city Aden, a senior health official said Saturday.

“There are at least 54 people dead and 187 wounded in armed clashes,” the director of the Aden health department, Al-Kheder Lassouar, told AFP.

A series of heavy explosions at an arms depot rocked Yemen’s second city Aden on Saturday, causing casualties, witnesses said.

The blasts were heard across the city and plumes of smoke were seen rising from the depot, where looting by residents had broken out a day earlier, an AFP correspondent reported.

Also on Saturday, Yemeni President Abed-Rabbo Mansour Hadi called for the Saudi-led military intervention in his country to continue until Shiite Houthi rebels surrender and their leaders are brought to justice.

“I call for this operation to continue until this gang surrenders and withdraws from all locations it has occupied in every province,” he told an Arab League summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Hadi demanded that the Houthi rebels surrender their heavy weapons and that “their leaders turn themselves in to face justice.”

“I say to Iran’s puppet and whoever is with him, you are the one who destroyed Yemen with your political immaturity,” Hadi said, in an apparent reference to rebel leader Abdulmalik al-Huthi.