REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, ADEN -- Fighters loyal to Yemen's president pushed Houthi fighters back from central Aden on Friday after they were reinforced with weapons parachuted into their beleaguered section of the southern port city by Saudi-led warplanes.
The military setback for the Shi'ite Houthis came after days of advances in Aden, the last major foothold of fighters loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, despite a week-old Saudi campaign of air strikes to halt the Houthis and bolster Hadi.
Sunni Muslim power Saudi Arabia, alarmed by the Iranian-allied Houthis' march on Hadi's powerbase in Aden, launched its air campaign nine days ago along with regional backers.
The intervention marks Riyadh's most assertive move yet to counter what it sees as a spread of Shi'ite Iran's power in the region, a proxy struggle also playing out in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
Aden residents said the Houthi fighters and their allies withdrew from the central Crater district as well as one of Hadi's presidential residences which they took 24 hours earlier.
A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, said the logistical support airdropped at dawn on Friday had helped turn the tide for Hadi's fighters.
"They received the support and they were able to change the situation on the ground, driving the Houthi militias out of the palace and the areas that they had briefly taken control of," he told a news briefing in Riyadh.
The crates of light weapons, telecommunications equipment and rocket-propelled grenades were parachuted into Aden's Tawahi district, on the far end of the Aden peninsula which is still held by Hadi loyalists, fighters told Reuters.
The Houthis, fighting alongside soldiers loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, emerged as the strongest force in Yemen after they took over the capital Sanaa in September. After they turned on Aden last week, Hadi fled abroad and has watched from Riyadh while his remaining authority has eroded.
Turmoil in the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country comes after year of separatism, tribal conflict, sectarian violence and an insurgency by al Qaeda militants targeted by U.S. drones.
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