ADEN — The Yemeni commander of a vast military district covering half the country's border with Saudi Arabia pledged support to President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi on Sunday, local officials said. The announcement puts at least 15,000 troops in the desert border area on the same side as the Kingdom. “Brig. Gen. Abdulrahman Al-Halily of the First Military District announced today his support for constitutional legitimacy as represented by President Hadi,” one of the officials told Reuters. The declaration was also broadcast on official radio in the city of Seiyun, the main city of the Hadramawt valley area where the district's main military base is located. Meanwhile, Yemen's government rejected a four-point peace plan for the country that Iran submitted to the United Nations. “We reject the Iranian initiative,” Yemeni government spokesman Rajeh Badi told Reuters by telephone from Qatar's capital, Doha. “The goal of the initiative is only a political maneuver.” Western and Arab diplomats in New York have shown little interest in the Iranian plan, saying they do not consider Iran a neutral peace broker in Yemen. Meanwhile, Yemeni army units aided by Popular Resistance forces in the eastern governorate of Maarib succeeded in seizing control of some posts which the Houthi militias and forces of deposed president Ali Abdullah Saleh were holding, eyewitnesses told Al Arabiya News Channel on Saturday night. Sources added that tribes and forces in support of President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi managed to control the point of Nabaa and also forced Houthi militias out of Al-Jmydr post, one of the most significant Houthi posts in the area. They also said that tribes and army forces in support of Hadi currently besiege the Mas camp, which was formerly run by the republican guards, and which the Houthis are using as an arms warehouse and a training camp. This happened after coalition warplanes targeted the camp and its surroundings with five aerial attacks on Saturday morning. Saudi Arabia launched on March 26 a military campaign answering a call from Hadi for intervention after Houthi militants overran the capital of Sanaa earlier this year. In addition to logistic help, the US has voiced its support of the campaign, dubbed Operation Decisive Storm, as a means of restoring stability to the embattled country. Last week, the UN Security Council passed a resolution placing an arms embargo on Houthi militants along with blacklisting their leader and deposed president Ali Abdullah Saleh's son. — Agencies
