Arab leaders agree on jt military force
World leaders meeting in Egypt have agreed to the creation of a joint Arab military force to face the modern "challenges" of the Middle East.
Egypt's president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, said the 22 member states of the Arab League would combine forces under the supervision of their various chiefs of staff.
The proposed joint army would have roughly 40,000 troops picked from the elite of nations including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar and Egypt itself, and would be supported by tanks, jets and warships.
The move comes as the crisis in Yemen continued to escalate, with Saudi-led air strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels entered a fourth day, reports The Independent.
Yesterday, Yemeni fighters loyal to the Saudi-backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi clashed with Iranian-allied Houthi fighters in downtown Aden, the absent leader's last major foothold in the country.
Hadi loyalists in the southern port city reported a gun battle in the central Crater district in which three people were killed, and said they recaptured the airport, which has changed hands several times in the last five days of fighting.
The health ministry, loyal to the Houthi fighters who control the capital, said Saudi-led air strikes had killed 35 people and wounded 88 overnight. The figures could not be independently confirmed, reports Reuters.
The Houthi fighters, representing a Shia minority that makes up around a third of Yemen's population, emerged as the most powerful force in the Arab world's poorest country last year when they captured the capital Sanaa.
Saudi Arabia has rallied Sunni Muslim Arab countries in an air campaign to support Hadi, who relocated to Aden in February and is now in Riyadh after leaving Yemen in the past week. The fighting has brought civil war to a country that was already sliding into chaos and which had been a battlefield for the secret US drone war against al-Qaeda.
Documents from the weekend's Arab League called for "coordination, efforts and steps to establish a unified Arab force" to intervene in situations like Yemen.
But it is unlikely to have an immediate military impact on what is increasingly becoming a war by proxy between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Working out the mechanism and logistics of the unified force, an idea first floated by former general Sisi, could take months.
In the eastern province of Shabwa, tribal sources said armed tribesmen were fighting a major battle with the Houthis and their army allies at a military base, killing around 30 Houthis. This also could not be independently confirmed.
Saudi-led coalition warplanes struck military targets at airports in the capital Sanaa and in Hodeida, the main Red Sea port.
In the northern city of Saada, a Houthi stronghold near the Saudi border, strikes hit Houthi military bases belonging to the militia and their ally, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh who still controls most army units.
Saleh stood down after a 2011 uprising but still wields wide influence in Yemen. He appealed on Saturday to Arab leaders meeting in Egypt to halt their four-day offensive and resume talks on political transition in Yemen, promising that neither he nor his relatives would seek the presidency.
FIGHTING IN ADEN CENTRE
Fighters loyal to Hadi said yesterday that they recaptured Aden airport after fighting which lasted all night. Heavy fighting in the area during the last week meant that foreign diplomats had to be evacuated from the city by boat, ferried by Saudi naval vessels to the Red Sea port of Jeddah on Saturday.
Witnesses in Aden's northern Dar Saad district reported seeing two tanks destroyed by Hadi loyalists battling army units who are fighting alongside the Houthis. Five members of the Shi'ite militia were killed in the suburbs, loyalists said.
In comments addressed to Arab heads of state meeting in Egypt, Saleh appealed to the Saudi-led coalition on Saturday to stop "the aggression and return to the negotiations table", saying Hadi had failed to run the country.
"Let's go to dialogue and elections, and I promise you that neither I nor any of my relatives will run for the presidency."
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