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Yemen president resigns

January 22, 2015 at 6:06 pm

Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi has tendered his resignation to parliament speaker Yahya al-Raie, a presidential source said Thursday.

The move came moments after Hadi received the resignation of Prime Minister Khaled Bahah and his government.

A government source said Bahah’s resignation had been prompted by “interference” by the Shiite Houthi group and the latter’s “non-abidance by agreements with the presidency and refusal to vacate the presidential sites it has occupied over the past two days.”

The resignations came one day after the government failed to hold its weekly meeting because Houthi militants had taken over all main government offices.

Bahah himself was only allowed to leave the presidential palace in Sanaa on Tuesday after being held by Houthi militants for three days.

Sanaa has been rocked by deadly clashes over the past few days between Houthi militants and presidential guard units near the presidential palace in Sanaa amid an apparent push by the former to consolidate their control over the fractious country.

On Wednesday, Yemen’s presidency said the Houthis had vowed to vacate the presidential palace, dismantle checkpoints set up in Sanaa, and free a presidential aide detained earlier.

The Houthis seized Sanaa last September and have since moved to extend their control to other provinces.

Some Arab capitals accuse Shiite Iran of supporting Yemen’s ongoing Houthi insurgency.

Yemen has remained in a state of relative lawlessness since a popular uprising that erupted in 2011 forced autocratic President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down one year later.