|
 The clashes, which lasted around six hours, started late on
Tuesday when Houthis shelled the camp with heavy weapons, soldiers
from the camp said. At least 10 people were killed.
The troops had been trained and equipped by the United States as an
elite counterterrorism unit during the rule of ex-president Ali
Abullah Saleh, who was ousted by Arab Spring protests in 2011,
military sources told Reuters.
Houthi militiamen seized Sanaa in September, eventually leading
President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee to Aden this week where he
seeks to set up a rival center of power.
For more than a decade the United States has watched with alarm as
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - the most powerful arm of the
global militant group - has grown in Yemen as the political chaos
has mounted.
The U.S. military trained and kitted out Yemeni soldiers under
Saleh, and under Hadi the CIA has stepped up drone strikes aimed at
killing suspected militants.
U.S. officials have expressed concern that the rule of the
resolutely anti-American Shi'ite Muslim Houthis will harm their
counterterrorism efforts in a country that shares a long border with
Saudi Arabia, the world's oil exporter.
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Yemen's Sunni Gulf neighbors have decried the Houthi takeover as a
coup, and the head of the Gulf Cooperation Council Abdullatif
al-Zayyani arrived in Aden to meet Hadi on Wednesday, political
sources there said.
The power struggle between the Houthis in Sanaa and Hadi in Aden
casts more doubt on U.N.-sponsored talks to resolve Yemen's crisis
peacefully, and exacerbates sectarian and regional splits which may
plunge the country into civil war.
The Houthis said on Tuesday that Hadi had lost his legitimacy as
head of state and was being sought as a fugitive from justice.
(Additional reporting By Mohammed Mukhashaf and Noah Browning;
Writing by Maha El Dahan; Editing by Alison Williams)
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