Yemen president urges separatists to ‘stop the bloodshed’

Yemen’s president on Saturday called on southern separatists to “stop the bloodshed” and abide by a power-sharing agreement, in his first public comments since the secessionists declared autonomy in April. The conflict between the Southern Transitional Council (STC) and the internationally recognised government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi constitutes a second front in Yemen, already split by a war between government loyalists and Iran-backed Huthi rebels. “I call on the so-called Southern Transitional Council… to return to the path of the Riyadh Agreement and stop the bloodshed,” Hadi said during a meeting on Saturday with high-level government officials, referring to a power-sharing deal for the south struck last November that quickly became defunct.