Exiled son of slain Yemen ex-leader calls for revenge: Saudi-owned TV

ADEN/DUBAI (Reuters) - The son of Yemen’s ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh has called for revenge against the armed Houthi movement that killed the veteran leader after he switched sides in the civil war.

The intervention by the exiled Ahmed Ali Saleh, if confirmed, could shift the balance of power yet again after a dramatic week that saw the elder Saleh abandon his Houthi allies, who responded by killing him and routing his family’s forces from the capital Sanaa in street battles.

Yemen’s civil war, pitting the Iran-allied Houthis who control Sanaa against a Saudi-led military alliance backing a government based in the south, has led to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with the United Nations warning of a potential famine that could threaten the lives of millions.

Yemen’s capital Sanaa was quiet on Tuesday after five days of fighting and 25 airstrikes overnight, and U.N. and Red Cross aid flights had landed at the airport, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Yemen Jamie McGoldrick said. The funeral of Saleh was expected later on Tuesday.

Arab states, which mainly support the Saudi-backed government, condemned the killing of the veteran ex-leader, saying his death could cause an “explosion” in the country.

The death of Saleh, who once compared ruling Yemen to dancing on the heads of snakes, deepens the complexity of the multi-sided war.

Much is likely to depend on the future allegiances of his loyalists, who had helped the Houthis, a Shi‘ite insurgent movement, seize and hold of much of the country until he dramatically switched sides on Saturday.

It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the report of comments by his son, a former leader of the elite Republican Guards who has been exiled in the United Arab Emirates, a country that backs the Saudi-led coalition.

“I will lead the battle until the last Houthi is thrown out of Yemen ... the blood of my father will be hell ringing in the ears of Iran,” Ahmed Ali Saleh was quoted as saying.

He called for his father’s backers to “take back Yemen from the Iranian Houthi militias”.

The Arabian peninsula’s poorest country, Yemen is one of the most violent fronts in a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, who have also backed opposing sides in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere across the Middle East.

The Arab League’s general secretariat condemned the Iran-aligned Houthi movement which killed Saleh as a “terrorist organisation” and demanded that the international community view it as such.