![A soldier loyal to the Saudi and UAE-backed government, manning a machine gun mounted on a vehicle passing by a mural depicting the late UAE founder and president Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, along a street in the southeastern port city of Mukalla, the capital Hadramawt province on 8 August 2018 [KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/GettyImages-1016080740Emirati-soldiers-in-Yemen.jpg?fit=1194%2C800&ssl=1)
Commander of the Yemeni 4th Brigade, Mehran Al-Qubati, revealed that the United Arab Emirates security forces are planning an imminent coup in Aden against President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.
“The Yemeni interior minister has instructed the legitimate government forces to be prepared to confront a possible UAE coup,” Al-Qubati said in a recorded message published on Saturday night.
“The Emirati plan aims to control the presidential protection brigades, the presidential palace and the central bank,” he said, adding that “the Southern Transitional Council (STC)’s main aim is to control the 4th Brigade, then storm the presidential palace in Maasheq.”
Yemen’s Akhbar Al-Youm newspaper also reported that the security belt forces have spread in Aden’s main thoroughfares.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are part of an Arab coalition fighting in Yemen against the Iran-backed Houthis and forces loyal to ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The coalition entered the war in 2015 to reinstate the UN-backed President Hadi. However the UAE has been found to be backing the Southern Transitional Council in an effort to split Yemen in to two countries, North and South, contrary to the objectives of the coalition.
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