Deadly rebel infighting rocks Yemen capital for second night

Yemeni rebel factions held new talks Friday aimed at ending infighting that left at least three more people dead overnight and raised fears of a new front in the country's devastating three-year war.

The internal rift has shaken the fragile alliance between the Iran-backed Huthis and loyalists of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who joined ranks in 2014 to seize Sanaa.

The former enemies drove President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's internationally recognised government out of the capital, which has been rocked by rebel infighting for the past two nights.

In an effort to reach a truce, Saleh's General People's Congress (GPC) said a joint committee had launched talks in Sanaa to find "a solution that would restore calm".

The Huthis, tribal rebels who hail from northern Yemen, confirmed they had also sent representatives to the meeting.

The GPC accused the Huthis, also known as Ansarullah, of targeting the ex-president's nephew, who is a military commander in the forces loyal to Saleh, late on Thursday.

"We were surprised by an armed attack by Ansarullah targeting the guards of the house of Brigadier Tareq Saleh, which left three dead and wounded three others," read a statement released by the party.

"We hold Ansarullah fully responsible."

Thursday night's violence in Sanaa came 24 hours after clashes at the Saleh mosque in the capital killed nine Huthi rebels and five Saleh supporters.

One source at the Jumhuriya hospital said late on Thursday that the death toll from the infighting had risen to as many as 18 rebels and six Saleh loyalists.

The wider Yemen conflict has claimed more than 8,600 lives since Saudi Arabia and its allies joined the Hadi government's fight against the rebels in 2015, triggering what the United Nations has described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The rebel infighting comes as tensions soar between the insurgents and the Saudi-led coalition, which imposed a crippling blockade on Yemen in response to a Huthi missile that was intercepted near Riyadh airport on November 4.

Saudi Arabia intercepted and destroyed another ballistic missile fired from Yemen late Thursday, state media in Riyadh said.

No casualties were reported.

The coalition, which accuses the rebels of being a proxy for Saudi Arabia's regional rival Iran, says the blockade is meant to stop the flow of arms to the rebels from Tehran.

Iran denies it is supplying the Huthis with arms.

Saudi Arabia said Friday it had seized thousands of weapons and hundreds of smugglers illegally crossing over from Yemen in the past year, as "foreign agents" looked to stage attacks in the kingdom.

Source: AFP