SANA, Yemen — The leader of the Houthi rebel group here, in an unusually combative speech Thursday that reflected frustration by the rebel movement at its deepening isolation, accused Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s powerful neighbor, of financing armed opponents and trying to divide the country.
The Houthis control the capital, Sana, in northern Yemen, and much of the nation’s military. Yet their authority faces a sharp challenge from Yemen’s former president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled to the southern city of Aden on Saturday and, with the backing of Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf monarchies, declared that he was still the country’s legitimate leader.
Yemen has been without a government since late January, when Mr. Hadi and his cabinet resigned under pressure from the Houthis. Now the country appears more and more splintered between competing fiefs in the north and south, raising fears that it will suffer the same fate as Libya, riven by increasingly bloody factional fighting between rival governments.
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Shuaib Almosawa reported from Sana, and Kareem Fahim from Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
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