Anti-Houthi fight to stop Iranian expansion: Hadi

Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansur Hadi is welcomed by Sudanese officials upon his arrival at the Khartoum airport .AFP PHOTO / EBRAHIM HAMID - AFP

Yemen's exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansur Hadi said on Saturday that his forces were battling Houthi rebels across the country to check "Iranian expansion" in the region.
Hadi was speaking as he made a short visit to Sudan, which was seen as being close to Iran before it joined a Saudi-led coalition against the Yemeni rebels in April.
"We are currently leading a war based on stopping Iranian expansion in the region," Hadi said at a Press conference with his Sudanese counterpart Omar Al Bashir.
"Iranian expansion is present now in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon," the Yemeni president said.
His comments came as coalition warplanes launched strikes against the Iranian-backed rebel positions in Yemen and reinforcements reached pro-government troops preparing for an anticipated push towards the capital Sanaa, military sources reported.
Hadi said rebel forces had been pushed back in recent weeks.
"Now there are few provinces where battles are still going on. There is fighting in Taez, and Ibb and Hodeida and Marib," he said.
He arrived in Sudan on Saturday afternoon to meet Bashir for talks. Sudan had previously been seen as close to Iran, whose warships used to make stops in Sudanese ports.
But last September, Sudan shut Iran's cultural centre in Khartoum and joined the coalition against the Houthis in March.
With air support from their coalition allies and freshly trained troops, supporters of the exiled president had pushed the rebels from the second city of Aden and four other southern provinces and are fighting to control the third city of Taez.
In March, Houthi rebels and troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh advanced on Aden, where Hadi had taken refuge after escaping house arrest in Sanaa.
Hadi later fled to Riyadh, which assembled an Arab coalition that mounted a fierce air campaign against the rebels.
At the Press conference, Bashir also promised to give assistance to Yemenis studying in the capital and that Sudanese doctors were in Aden treating civilians wounded in the conflict.
Meanwhile, gunmen on a motorbike on Sunday shot dead the director of security operations in war-strewn Yemen's second city Aden, police said.
Colonel Abdelhakim al Sanidi was killed as he was leaving his home in the coastal city's Mansura district, police officials said. The attackers fled after the shooting.
Yemeni authorities have long blamed the country's branch of Al Qaeda for such attacks on members of the security forces.
Backed by weapons and troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, government loyalists recaptured Aden from Iran-backed rebels and their allies in mid-July, before retaking four other southern provinces.
But security has remained fragile in the port city, where Al Qaeda suspects were accused last week of blowing up a building used by the secret police.
They also set up checkpoints in a district of the southern city and seized five buildings including an intelligence services facility, officials said. Also last week, a rocket attack on the governor's temporary headquarters in Aden killed four people and wounded 10 others.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, viewed by Washington as the network's deadliest, has exploited the unrest sweeping Yemen to seize the port city of Mukalla, 480 kilometres east of Aden.