Northern troops appeared to be gaining ground against their southern rivals in Yemen's blossoming civil war, with northern Yemeni tanks reported massing for an attack on the southern port city of Aden.
Fighting was reported to have spread to at least seven provinces, fueling a panicky exodus by many of the country's several thousand expatriates, including about 400 mostly European foreigners evacuated from Aden Friday on a French navy ship.Situated at the southern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen has been virtually cut off from the outside world since Wednesday, when tensions between north and south erupted into full-scale civil war. Warplanes from both sides have launched air raids on the main airports at Sanaa and Aden, causing the suspension of most international flights.
The fighting has essentially re-created the divisions that existed before May 22, 1990, when conservative North Yemen merged with socialist South Yemen. But the two sides maintained separate armies and never overcame their mutual suspicions, with southerners accusing the more populous north of trying to dominate the impoverished, oil-producing nation of 12 million people.
Prospects for reconciliation seemed even more remote after the northern-dominated national government late Thursday fired key southerners on the cabinet, including Yemen's vice president.
The fracturing of what is sometimes described - perhaps a bit optimistically - as the Arab world's youngest democracy set offa frantic round of diplomacy in Middle Eastern capitals. Diplomats in Cairo said the Arab League was planning an emergency session Saturday to discuss the possibility of sending an Arab peace-keeping force to Yemen; Syrian President Hafez Assad and Algerian President Liamine Zeroual urged leaders of the warring factions to call a cease-fire; and a plane carrying Arab negotiators from Cairo to Yemen had to turn back after it was unable to land.
In the meantime, however, fighting appeared to be spreading, with northern forces reported closing in on the southern stronghold of Aden in the heart of the country's oil-producing region.
"The reports from Aden are very dramatic," said a French diplomat who read cables sent by radio from Sanaa to Paris Friday morning. "Northern troops surround the city, and we are expecting an attack."
The southern military command claimed that its troops set fire to the presidential place during a battle Friday in Sanaa, although the capital seemed relatively quiet Friday night, the AP reported.