Mr Hadi’s Riyadh-based government said on Friday that its loyalists had freed the city after four months of ferocious fighting with rebels and renegade troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
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From exile in Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s vice president Khaled Bahah yesterday declared the “liberation” of Aden after four months of deadly and destructive fighting between Shia Houthi rebels and local Sunni anti-Houthi and pro-government fighters.
And if this is not al-Qaeda and if Hadi and the Saudis say there is no al-Qaeda in Aden, so it does not matter for the Yemenis.
The minister said the rebels had been pushed out of the city, except for “few besieged groups that are refusing to surrender”.
Witnesses in the city said that at least one neighborhood was still contested and that Houthi snipers remained active in several others. “We will work to restore life in Aden and all the liberated cities, to restore water and electricity”, he declared on his Facebook page, according to DW.
A rebel spokesman dismissed the government’s claims on Saturday that it had seized control of Aden as “psychological warfare and an attempt to improve the crushed morale” of loyalist fighters.
The rebels attempted to bring in reinforcements from the central province of Baida overnight but they were bombed by a Saudi-led coalition which has been waging an air campaign against them since March.
Aden was Hadi’s last refuge after he fled the rebel-controlled capital Sanaa earlier this year as the rebels took over the government and launched an offensive in which they seized much of the rest of the country.
Loyalist forces had secured Aden airport shortly after they launched an assault on Tuesday against the rebels dubbed “Operation Golden Arrow”.
That followed a major offensive to retake the city last week.
More than 80 per cent of Yemen’s population – 21 million people – are in need of aid, with 13 million facing food shortages.
More than 3,200 people have been killed in the fighting – many of them civilians, the United Nations says.
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Press TV: The news about how the AQAP, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has not been targeted by these Saudi airstrikes, well news just came out finally saying that there are some – what they categorize in the media as Sunni fighters – who are now asking al-Qaeda to join their fight against the Ansarullah movement on the ground.
