Shia rebels who recently overran Yemen’s capital seized control of a key port city on the Red Sea and a province south of Sana’a on Tuesday.
The development indicates that the rebels, known as the Houthis, may be determined to carve out a mini-state within Yemen, taking advantage of the weakness of the central government and the disarray in the army and security forces.
The Houthis, who are widely believed to be supported by Iran, already control the provinces of Saada and Omran north of the capital.
On Tuesday, they pushed into the Red Sea port city of Hodeida, west of Sana’a, and the capital of a province with the same name, which they have besieged for days, said Yemeni officials.
The rebels set up checkpoints and deployed forces at all entry points to the city, its airport and seaport, and were also in control of several military bases inside Hodeida, 125 miles west of Sana’a.
South of Sana’a, the Houthis took Damar province and its provincial capital, also called Damar. Officials said soldiers and police had vanished from Damar city’s streets and been replaced by armed Houthis.
The political goals behind the Houthis’ push across Yemen have not been entirely clear. The fighting erupted earlier in the summer, mainly around the Houthis’ northern stronghold of Saada province, where they fought Sunni tribesmen allied with Islamist militias and then spread to the capital, which the rebels overran last month.
The Houthis have long been at odds with the central government in Sana’a, enduring six military expeditions against their strongholds in Saada between 2004 and 2010. Critics of the rebels say they have modelled their movement after the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah, which has carved a de facto state within a state in southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as the densely populated suburbs south of Beirut.
The Yemeni rebels subscribe to the Shia Zaydi sect and take their name from the Houthi family, which founded the movement in Saada and claims descent from the prophet Muhammad.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in the southern port city of Aden on Tuesday, calling for secession from the north of the country. Southern Yemen was an independent nation until it was unified with the north in 1990. A movement to break away from the union was ruthlessly crushed in 1994 by the army of the now ousted president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Beside the threat to Yemen’s unity posed by the southern secessionist movement and the rebel Houthis, the impoverished Arab nation at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula is home to what Washington views as the most dangerous branch of al-Qaida.
For years, Yemen has also endured political instability amid an Arab spring uprising and relentless attacks by al-Qaida militants targeting its military and security forces, which have faced large-scale bombings and suicide attacks and have unsuccessfully battled to rout the militants from strongholds they control in the south and the country’s remote hinterland.
