Yemen’s Houthis meet Saleh’s party members

The Houthi group has met with members of late Ali Abdullah Saleh’s General People’s Congress (GPC) party days after killing him, Al Jazeera reported.

The meeting was attended by the Houthi political chief, Saleh Al-Sammad and Hisham Sharaf, the Houthi minister of foreign affairs. Assistant Secretary-General of the GPC, Yahyah Al Rai, attended the meeting along with a speaker from Parliament.

It is not clear what was discussed, but the purpose was to mend ties between the groups.

The Houthi group has had a turbulent alliance with the former president’s GPC party. Both have called each other out as “militias”, following short battles between factions in the course of the Yemen civil war.

Since the killing of Saleh in early December, the Houthis have come under sustained attack by the Saudi-led coalition and the remaining loyalists of Saleh party.

In a push to retake territory from the Houthis, the national army of the internationally recognised President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi has been joined by former Saleh loyalists following his assassination in an effort to retake control of areas under Houthi control

The Saudi-led coalition executed several air strikes in support of a ground offensive in the province of Hudaydah today.

This week, the Houthi group lost the region of Khokha, a district of 122 kilometres south of the vital Red Sea port town of Hudaydah, to the new coalition.

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