Foreign airlines suspended their flights to the Yemeni capital on Friday after Houthi Shiite rebels overran a security checkpoint near Sana'a airport following clashes with army forces and Sunni rivals, local media reported.
Citing the state aviation authority, state-run news agency Saba said the carriers had suspended flights to Sana'a for 24 hours pending a review of the security situation in the city.
The Houthis - locked in an escalating face-off with federal authorities in recent months - seized a second checkpoint Thursday in the north-eastern suburb of al-Hataresh, independent news site Barakish.net said.
Meanwhile, state-run television reported that Houthi insurgents fired mortar at its headquarters in northern Sana'a. No casualties were reported. A spokesman for the rebel movement said the Houthis were acting in self defence.
"We did not attack the TV headquarters. The other sides were the ones who fired mortars and we only returned them," Ali al-Qahum told dpa, referring to militiamen from the Sunni Salah Party and their allied military.
The latest unrest follows days of fighting between the Houthis and government troops, backed by Sunni tribesmen, on the outskirts of Sana'a.
The movement's followers have in recent weeks staged a series of rallies and set up camps near key ministries in Sana'a to press for the removal of the government and reinstatement of full energy subsidies.
The Houthis have expanded the areas under their control this year, from their northern stronghold of Saada on the Saudi border to the outskirts of Sana'a. The authorities accuse the Houthis of trying to reinstall the rule of the hereditary Ziaidi imams - who were toppled by a republican revolution in northern Yemen in 1962 - and of receiving support from Iran. Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world, also faces a secessionist movement in the formerly independent south and an insurgency by al-Qaeda operatives.
