Yemen crisis prompts U.S. withdrawal, emergency U.N. meeting
UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting Sunday to discuss the deteriorating situation in Yemen.
Yemen's Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, issued a call to arms Saturday to battle forces loyal to the country's embattled president, as U.S. troops evacuated a southern air base crucial to America's drone strike program after al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) militants seized a nearby city.
Late Saturday night, the State Department announced that the U.S. "has temporarily relocated its remaining personnel out of Yemen."
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"We will continue to engage the Yemeni people and the international community to strongly support Yemen's political transition," spokesman Jeff Rathke said in a statement, which emphasized U.S. support for Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour.
"We also continue to actively monitor terrorist threats emanating from Yemen and have capabilities postured in the area to address them," Rathke said. "As we have in the past, we will take action to disrupt continuing, imminent threats to the United States and our citizens. "
The statement gave no details about how many State Department personnel had been in the country or where they had been relocated.
Earlier Saturday, Yemeni security and military officials had said that U.S. troops, including Special Forces commandos, were evacuating from Yemen's largest air base. Some 100 American troops were believed to be stationed there.
The turmoil comes as Yemen battles AQAP, the target of the drone program, and faces a purported affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings that killed at least 137 people Friday.
According to CBS News' Pamela Falk, Sunday's U.N. meeting was called by Jordan, at the request of Yemen's president.
The Security Council was expected to discuss a draft statement which "deplores that the Houthis have not implemented the U.N. demand to withdraw their forces."
The statement repeats concerns expressed by the Council on Friday that AQAP was benefiting from the "deterioration of the political and security situation" in Yemen, Falk reported.
The overall fear is that Yemen -- the Arab world's most impoverished country, united only in the 1990s -- could topple toward another civil war. The possible presence of an ISIS-linked group complicates the situation, since al Qaeda and the extremists who hold a third of Iraq and Syria are already rivals.
"I hate to say this, but I'm hearing the loud and clear beating of the drums of war in Yemen," Mohammed al-Basha, a spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, D.C., wrote on Twitter.
The Shiite rebels swept into Yemen's capital, Sanaa, in September and now control it and nine of the country's 21 provinces. President Hadi, a one-time prisoner of the Houthis in his own home, escaped last month and installed himself in Aden, declaring it the temporary capital amid the Houthi insurrection.
On Saturday, Hadi gave his first televised address since fleeing the capital, striking a defiant tone. He described the rebels' rule as "a coup against constitutional legitimacy." He also pledged to raise the Yemeni flag over the Maran mountains, a stronghold for the Houthis, members of the Shiite Zaydi sect that represents nearly 30 percent of Yemen's population.
Hadi also said regional Shiite power Iran supported the Houthis, something critics also allege and the rebels deny. Sunni Gulf countries have lined up to support Hadi and have moved their embassies to Aden to back him against the Shiite rebels.
Almost immediately after Hadi's speech, the Houthis issued a statement announcing their offensive against security and military institutions loyal to Hadi, calling it a battle against extremists.
"The council announces this decision to call the proud sons of the Yemeni people in all regions to unite and support and cooperate with the armed and security forces in confronting terrorist forces," they said in the statement carried by the Houthi-controlled state news agency SABA.
Though seizing power in Sanaa and clashing with those protesting their power grab, the Houthis largely haven't resorted to open warfare since beginning their campaign in September. Their statement Saturday immediately recalled the years of war fought in the country, once split between a Marxist south that once was a British colony and a northern republic.