Former Yemen President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi dies in Saudi Arabia aged 80

Former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi has died aged 80 in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

Sources in the Yemeni presidency told AFP that Hadi “died in the Saudi capital following a sudden health crisis".

Hadi had been living in Saudi Arabia since 2015 when he fled following the outbreak of conflict between his Saudi-backed government and the Houthi movement.

He resigned as president in 2022 and had reportedly been living in virtual house arrest in the Saudi capital ever since.

Born in the southern governorate of Abyan at a time when South Yemen was still a British protectorate, Hadi occupied a number of military and political roles in both the Marxist-Leninist People's Democratic Republic of Yemen and the northern Yemen Arab Republic until the country was unified in 1990.

He served as vice president of Yemen under Ali Abdullah Saleh between 1994 and 2012, when he took over as president following Saleh's ouster by the Arab Spring protests.

Increasing tensions with the powerful Ansar Allah (better known as the Houthis) eventually led to the group seizing the capital Sana'a, Hadi fleeing into exile and Saudi Arab launching an offensive in Yemen.

By the time he stepped down in 2022, handing power to a Presidential Leadership Council, the conflict in Yemen had left hundreds of thousands dead and plunged the country into a humanitarian crisis.

Sources told Arab media that Hadi will be buried on Friday in Riyadh.

Former Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdulmalik al-Mekhlafi, who worked under Hadi, issued his condolences on social media and said he had been unfairly treated in life.

"I believe that the man was not given his due justice as he deserved, neither during his period of rule nor even before it, as an image was formed around him in the media that was often far from his true reality," he wrote on X.

"May God have mercy on him, forgive him, and grant him the highest paradise, and sincere condolences to his sons and all members of his family, and to the grieving Yemeni people."

The Houthis have yet to officially comment though one spokesperson acknowledged he had died in "mysterious circumstances".