UNITED NATIONS/Sanaa - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for an "immediate cease-fire" in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is conducting airstrikes against Houthi rebels, saying the impoverished country was "in flames".
In a speech Thursday evening in Washington, the secretary-general said the only resolution was for "all sides" to stop hostilities and take part in negotiations.
"The United Nations-supported diplomatic process remains the best way out of a drawn-out war with terrifying implications for regional stability," he said at the National Press Club. The UN chief also said the government in Riyadh is aware of the importance of dialogue in resolving the Yemeni crisis. "The Saudis have assured me that they understand there must be a political process," he pointed out, calling on “all Yemenis to participate” in diplomacy.
The secretary-general further said he is trying to find a new representative "who can be immediately deployed" to the violence-wracked country.
At least 700 people have died since the Saudi Arabia-led coalition began airstrikes March 25 against the Houthi rebels, which are believed to be backed by Iran.
"Even before the latest escalation, two out of three Yemenis relied on humanitarian assistance," Ban said. "Levels of food insecurity were higher than in the poorest stretches of Africa." The cease-fire would reduce suffering, enable the delivery of humanitarian aid and, ideally, facilitate negotiations, he said.  On Friday, the UN on Friday sent out an urgent appeal for $274 million to help provide emergency assistance to the millions affected by the conflict. At least 150,000 have been displaced by the violence, it said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda militants in southeast Yemen on Friday seized heavy weapons as they overran a key camp in Hadramawt provincial capital Mukalla, consolidating their grip on the city, an official said.
"Today Al-Qaeda fighters took control of the 27th Mechanised Brigade's camp and seized heavy weapons including tanks and artillery," the official told AFP, confirming that Al-Qaeda now controlled all of Mukalla a day after seizing its airport. Residents of the city confirmed the camp had been seized "without resistance".
Until Friday, the camp in eastern Mukalla had remained loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour al-Hadi and was the only military site not taken over by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Meanwhile, Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Friday he would not leave the country, dismissing reports in the Gulf Arab media that he was seeking a safe exit as Saudi Arabian war planes bomb troops loyal to him and their Houthi militia allies.
The United Nations, meanwhile, said about 150,000 people had been driven from their homes by three weeks of air strikes and ground fighting and more than 750 people killed. Many schools, hospitals and mosques had been damaged or destroyed in the conflict, it said.
Moreover, at least 76 people were killed in Yemen Friday as Saudi-led warplanes pounded rebels heading to bolster an assault on loyalists in Aden and fighting raged in Taez, officials said.
At least 20 rebels were killed, and two tanks and four armoured vehicles destroyed, in the overnight air strikes on a convoy headed out of Yemen's largest air base, Al-Anad, provincial official Abedrabbo al-Mihwali said. The base was the main watching post for a long-running US-led war on Al-Qaeda in Yemen, and its evacuation by Western troops as the rebels advanced last month has created a vacuum that the jihadists have exploited to make big territorial gains.
In the port city of Aden, 32 rebels were among 40 people who died in fighting and air raids over the past 24 hours, a military source said. Most of the rebels were killed in ambushes on the Dar Saad quarter of the southern city, Yemen's second largest. In Taez, in the central highlands north of Aden, at least 16 people were killed as soldiers who have remained loyal to exiled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi put up fierce resistance to an attack on their base by Huthi Shiite rebels and renegade troops.
Three civilians were among the dead when a stray shell hit their home, a military source and residents said. The 35th Brigade headquarters at the centre of the fighting escaped the lightning offensive that saw the rebels advance from their stronghold in the mainly Shiite northern mountains this spring into mostly Sunni central and southern provinces. The support of army units still loyal to longtime strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, ousted in 2012 after a bloody year-long uprising, has been crucial to the insurgents' progress. Saudi-owned Arabiya TV, citing a Gulf official, said representatives of Saleh had visited Arab capitals and floated an initiative for him and his family to leave safely. "I'm not the type who goes looking for a place to live in Jeddah, Paris or Europe. My country is my birthplace. The person who can say to Ali Abdullah Saleh 'leave your country' has not been and will not be born," he wrote on his Facebook page.
In Geneva on Friday, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said about 150,000 people have been displaced - 50 percent more than the previous UN estimate. Health facilities had reported 767 deaths from March 19 to April 13, almost certainly an underestimate, it said.
"Thousands of families have now fled their homes as a result of the fighting and air strikes," the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Johannes Van Der Klaauw, said in a statement. "Ordinary families are struggling to access health care, water, food and fuel - basic requirements for their survival."
The fighting had destroyed, damaged or disrupted at least five hospitals, 15 schools, Yemen's three main airports, two bridges, two factories and four mosques, as well as markets, power stations and water and sanitation facilities, OCHA said.Public water services were on the verge of collapse and hospitals were overwhelmed with casualties.
Iran has called for immediate peace talks between Yemen's warring parties, official media said Friday, as rebels backed by Tehran battle loyalist forces supported by Saudi-led air strikes. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made the appeal during a telephone call with UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday, the IRNA news agency said. Iran has proposed a peace plan for Yemen that calls for a ceasefire followed by foreign-mediated talks by all sides.
Meanwhile, two suspected Al-Qaeda militants were killed overnight in Yemen in a drone strike believed to have been carried out by the United States, a tribal source said on Friday.
The late night strike targeted a vehicle in Habban, southeast of Ataq, the main town in southern Shabwa province.
It "killed the two occupants, two members of Al-Qaeda," said the source, identifying one of the victims as Khaled Atef, a cousin of the province's Al-Qaeda chief.
Al-Qaeda militants have exploited the breakdown of security since a Saudi-led coalition launched an air war last month against rebels fighting Yemeni forces.
Among its gains, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has seized almost all of Mukalla, the capital of Hadramawt province.
United States Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said last week that Al-Qaeda was seizing terrain during the chaos in Yemen, but vowed that Washington would continue to combat the extremist group.
The US classifies Yemen-based AQAP as the deadliest franchise of the extremist movement.