Secretary of state says he is aware supplies are arriving in Yemen from Iran and warns the US will not step away from its allies in the region

Yemen conflict: 'This war has killed everything that was beautiful' Read more

John Kerry says the US is aware that Iran is providing support to Houthi rebels in Yemen and will continue to support countries in the Middle East who feel threatened by Tehran.

The secretary of state’s re-affirmation of US commitment to its allies in the Middle East follows the successful conclusion of nuclear negotiations with Iran and as Yemen becomes the latest theatre in the regional proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Gulf’s leading Shia and Sunni powers.

Iran, which denies accusations that it is arming the Houthis, has sent two warships off the coast of Yemen. The US’s long-time Saudi allies have carried out air strikes against the Houthis.



Kerry told PBS’s NewsHour programme: “There are obviously supplies that have been coming from Iran. There are a number of flights every single week that have been flying in. Iran needs to recognise that the US is not going to stand by while the region is destabilised.



“We’re not looking for confrontation, obviously, but we’re not going to step away from our alliances and our friendships and the need to stand with those who feel threatened as a consequence of the choices that Iran might be making,”

Houthi rebels fought street-by-street battles with local militias in the old centre of Aden on Wednesday, as the first boatloads of emergency medical aid arrived in the south Yemeni port city where aid workers say a humanitarian catastrophe looms.



Residents saw a dozen bodies strewn on the streets and said that rocket fire had damaged and destroyed a number of buildings. Mosques broadcast appeals for jihad against the Houthi movement, Shia fighters who have taken over large areas of Yemen.

By mid-afternoon, residents of the central Crater neighbourhood said the Houthi push, backed by tanks and armoured vehicles, had been at least partially repelled and that Houthi fighters had been cleared from some northern neighbourhoods.

Aden has been the target of a three-week-old assault by Houthi forces, which already control the Yemeni capital of Sana’a. Saudi launched air strikes on 26 March in a bid to stop the Houthi advance.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Video released by the Houthi group on Tuesday purports to show an air strike on the Yemeni city of Sana’a.

The UAE’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, said on Wednesday that the Saudi-led coalition would seek a UN ban on arms sales to the Houthis and accused Iran of meddling in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Tehran said the two warships sent to the Gulf of Aden would protect Iranian shipping. The US has deepened its involvement, announcing late on Tuesday that it was stepping up weapons deliveries and intelligence-sharing in support of the Saudi-led coalition.



“Saudi Arabia is sending a strong message to the Houthis and their allies that they cannot overrun Yemen by force,” the US deputy secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told reporters in Riyadh. “In support of that effort, we have expedited weapons deliveries.”

A US defence official told Agence France-Presse that Washington was sending primarily precision-guided munitions.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Yemeni man sits in his car in Sana’a after it was damaged in a reported air strike by the Saudi-led coalition. Photograph: Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned of a “catastrophic” situation in Aden, where militias loyal to the fugitive president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, have been holding out against Houthi rebels and their allies within the security forces.



The fighting has had a devastating impact on some parts of the city. Scores of people have been killed, water and electricity have been cut off in central neighbourhoods and hospitals have struggled to cope with the casualties.

“It’s nearly catastrophic,” said the ICRC’s spokeswoman in Yemen, Marie Claire Feghali. “Shops are closed, so people cannot get food, they cannot get water. There are still dead bodies in the street. Hospitals are extremely exhausted.”

A boat carrying 2.5 tonnes of medicine docked in Aden on Wednesday, the medical aid group Médecins Sans Frontières said.

The ICRC said a surgical team also reached Aden on Wednesday by boat, and was heading to a hospital in the city of a million people.

The World Health Organisation says at least 643 people have been killed in the conflict and more than 2,200 wounded. Tens of thousands of families have been displaced by fighting on the ground and by the air strikes.

A Yemeni fighter opposing the Houthi rebels fires his weapon in Aden as clashes continue. Photograph: SALEH AL-OBEIDI/AFP/Getty Images

Iran stepped up its efforts for a negotiated settlement with a visit to the Saudi ally Pakistan by the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Islamabad has so far deflected appeals by Riyadh to join the coalition of nine mainly Sunni Arab countries intervening in Yemen, for fear of deepening sectarian divisions at home and across the Muslim world.



The deepening conflict has raised fears that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the terror group’s Yemeni wing, will exploit the power vacuum. It stormed the town of Mukalla last week, freeing a jailed local leader, and on Wednesday was reported by a monitoring group to have offered a bounty of 20kg (44lb) of gold for the capture or killing of the leader of Yemen’s Houthi forces and his ally, the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Ashton Carter, the US defence secretary, acknowledged on Wednesday that the fighting in Yemen was complicating Washington’s counter-terrorism efforts but vowed that they would go on regardless. “Obviously it’s always easier to conduct CT ops when there is a stable government willing to cooperate,” he said.

Crisis in Yemen – the Guardian briefing Read more

“That circumstance now obviously doesn’t exist in Yemen, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t continue to take steps to protect ourselves. We have to do it in a different way, but we do and we are.”