Saudi Arabia has bombed an arms shipment from the United Arab Emirates bound for separatist forces in Yemen.
The attack on Tuesday has deepened the rift between the two Gulf allies that back rival armed groups fighting the Houthis, the Iran-backed rebels, in Yemen’s crippling civil war.
Yemen’s government has since declared a state of emergency and cancelled a security pact with the UAE in response to Abu Dhabi-backed separatists seizing swathes of territory in the south in recent weeks.
It has set a 24-hour deadline for all Emirati forces to leave Yemen.
Saudi Arabia supports the internationally recognised government in Yemen, while the UAE backs the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist force seeking to revive the formerly independent state of South Yemen.
On Tuesday, Riyadh called the UAE’s actions “extremely dangerous” and “a threat to the kingdom” and regional security, bringing the two countries closer to a direct conflict.
A Saudi-led coalition warned on Saturday that it would back Yemen’s government in any military confrontation with separatist forces and urged the STC forces to withdraw “peacefully” from recently seized areas.
The coalition hit two ships in Yemen’s southern port city of Mukalla that were carrying “a large quantity of weapons and combat vehicles to support the Southern Transitional Council forces”, the Saudi state-run news agency SPA reported.
The ships had arrived from the port of Fujairah, on the east coast of the UAE, the SPA said, adding that the operation was conducted overnight to avoid collateral damage.
Saudi Arabia launched air strikes on STC forces on Friday to halt their advance after they captured most of the oil-rich province of Hadhramaut and neighbouring al-Mahra, with little resistance.
Washington has called for restraint in the rapidly escalating conflict, with Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, on Saturday saying diplomacy was needed to reach a “lasting solution”.
Rashad al-Alimi, the head of Yemen’s presidential council, called the separatists’ advance an “unacceptable rebellion” in a televised address on Tuesday.
Yemen’s government is a patchwork of groups, which includes the separatists, and is held together by shared opposition to the Houthis who seized Yemen’s capital of Sanaa in 2014 and secured control over most of the north.
Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE joined an Arab coalition in 2015 in response to the militant group’s offensive, but Abu Dhabi steadily decreased in participation and the Houthis, with Iran’s support, grew stronger.
In support of Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis for two years carried out attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea, disrupting a global trade route. The strikes have eased since the ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave.
Since the Houthi takeover of Yemen, supporters of the STC and its affiliates have been gathering regularly in cities to demand independence for the state of South Yemen, which was unified with the rest of the country in 1990.
On Saturday, a large demonstration took place in the city of Aden, with the crowd waving both the South Yemen independence flag and the UAE’s flag.
A Yemeni military official said on Friday that about 15,000 Saudi-backed fighters were massed near the Saudi border, but had not been given orders to advance on separatist-held territory.
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