Yemen's newly-appointed Vice President Khaled Bahah, a widely respected figure named this week to shore up the legitimacy of the exiled Saudi-backed government, said on Thursday he hoped to avert a Saudi-led invasion to restore unity to the country.
The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday imposed an arms embargo targeting the Iran-allied Houthi rebels who rule most of Yemen and blacklisted the son of the country's former president and a Houthi leader after council veto-power Russia abstained.
Iran's foreign minister laid out a four-point Yemen peace plan on Tuesday including dialogue and humanitarian aid, and renewed his call for an end to Saudi-led air strikes against the Houthi rebel force allied to Tehran.
Iran's Arabic-language state TV network Al Alam said on Sunday its Twitter account had been hacked and a false report was posted that an Iran-allied rebel leader in Yemen had died.
Iran's leader on Thursday condemned the military intervention by its main regional rival Saudi Arabia in Yemen as genocide, sharply escalating Tehran's rhetoric against the two-week-old campaign of air strikes.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar said on Thursday they had decided to act to protect Yemen against what they called aggression by the Houhti militia, according to a joint statement by the five Gulf Arab countries.
Saudi troops clashed with Yemeni Houthi fighters on Tuesday in the heaviest exchange of cross-border fire since the start of a Saudi-led air offensive last week, while Yemen's foreign minister called for a rapid Arab intervention on the ground.
Warplanes from Saudi Arabia and Arab allies struck Shi'ite Muslim rebels fighting to oust Yemen's president on Thursday, a gamble by the world's top oil exporter to check Iranian influence in its backyard without direct military backing from Washington.
Opponents of Yemen's Houthi militia announced the formation of a national alliance on Saturday to restore the authority of the state, in a major shakeup of Yemen's political landscape.
Yemen's former president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi left his official residence after weeks of house arrest by the Houthi militia on Saturday and flew to his home town of Aden, witnesses and a political source said.
Yemen's feuding parties have agreed on a "people's transitional council" to help govern the country and guide it out of a political crisis, U.N. mediator Jamal Benomar announced on Friday.
The United Nations Security Council on Sunday demanded Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen withdraw from government institutions, called for an end to foreign interference and threatened "further steps" if the violence does not stop.
Yemenis in the capital Sanaa and the central city of Taiz held the largest protests yet against a takeover by a Shi'ite Muslim militia group on Wednesday after the United States, Britain and France shut their embassies over security fears.
The United States is closing its embassy in Yemen, the Arabian peninsula state that is a front line in Washington's war against al Qaeda, embassy employees and U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
The leader of Yemen's Houthis who control the capital Sanaa said on Tuesday his group was seeking a peaceful transfer of power after the resignation of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and urged all factions to work together to solve the crisis.
The United States has halted some counter-terrorism operations against al Qaeda militants in Yemen following a takeover of the country by Iran-backed Houthi rebels, U.S. officials said on Friday.
Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi resigned on Thursday, just days after Houthi rebels battled their way into his presidential palace, plunging the unstable Arab country deeper into chaos and depriving Washington of a key ally against al Qaeda.
Yemen's powerful Houthi movement fought artillery battles with the army near the presidential palace in Sanaa on Monday, surrounded the prime minister's residence and drew accusations they were mounting a coup.
Yemen's Houthi movement, which seized the capital Sanaa in September, on Saturday rejected a new power-sharing government that President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi announced on Friday, thwarting his efforts to end the country's political crisis.
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a leader of a liberal Yemeni political party that is close to the powerful Houthi rebel group on Sunday, the official state news agency Saba said.
Yemen's new Shi'ite Muslim powerbrokers sent fighters towards an al Qaeda stronghold on Wednesday, raising the possibility of clashes between the politically ascendant Houthi movement and the hardline Sunni Muslims of the militant network.
