The United Arab Emirates said on Tuesday it was pulling its remaining forces out of Yemen after Saudi Arabia backed a call for UAE forces to leave within 24 hours, deepening a crisis between the two Gulf powers and oil producers.
Hours earlier, Saudi-led coalition forces had attacked the southern Yemeni port of Mukalla. The airstrike on what Riyadh said was a UAE-linked weapons shipment was the most significant escalation to date in a widening rift between the two Gulf monarchies.
In Washington, the U.S. State Department said Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with the Saudi and UAE foreign ministers about tensions in Yemen and other issues affecting security in the Middle East.
Several Gulf countries, including Kuwait and Bahrain, said they would support any efforts to bolster dialogue and reach a political solution. Qatar said the security of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries “constitutes an inseparable part” of its own security.
Saudi Arabia accused the UAE of pressuring Yemen’s separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) to move toward the kingdom’s borders and declared its national security a “red line”.
It was Riyadh’s strongest wording yet in the falling-out between the neighbours, who once cooperated in a coalition against Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis but whose interests there have steadily diverged.
The UAE’s withdrawal of the few forces it had kept in Yemen may ease tensions for now, but questions remain over whether it will continue supporting the STC.
Riyadh, for its part, has continued through the coalition it heads to back Yemen’s internationally recognised government, and the cabinet said it hoped the UAE would end all military or financial assistance to the STC.
The coalition said it bombed a dock it identified as being used to provide foreign military support to the separatists. Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen’s Saudi-backed presidential council, gave Emirati forces 24 hours to leave.
The UAE said it was surprised by the airstrike, that the shipments did not contain weapons and were destined for Emirati forces, and that it sought a “solution that prevents escalation, based on reliable facts and existing coordination”.
Yemen’s Saudi-led coalition said a shipment arriving from the United Arab Emirates to Yemen’s southern port of Mukalla contained containers loaded with weapons and ammunition.