Yemenis often say there are three guns for every person, a boast that has become an urgent concern in a country where the United Nations says the humanitarian situation is "critical". The precise number of weapons is impossible to verify, but the profusion of arms on display in Marib makes the three-to-one claim look not far off. Almost all of the men walking in the city centre, their cheeks full of the mild narcotic qat leaf, had an assault rifle slung across a shoulder; many of them also sported pistols in garish holsters or had hand grenades in jacket pockets. More than 5,400 people have been killed since March in a conflict perpetuated by shifting alliances based on region, religion, tribe and drawn into a Saudi-Iranian Cold War.
Easy access to weapons has enabled widely ranging groups to enter the fighting, including Islamist militants who have seized control of the port city of Mukalla, several hundred kilometres (miles) east of Marib in the Hadramawt region. United Nations experts cited the abundance of arms in Yemen as a regional worry in 2013, when al Qaeda linked militants already had a major base in the south, but the war has given such worries even greater urgency. Houthi militia, allied to Iran, and troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, were closing in on Marib a month ago, but were forced back by local fighters, some trained by Gulf countries, which assisted them with air strikes.
The Houthis and Saleh's forces have now been pushed into the hills 30 km away, but the periodic sound of distant explosions is constant evidence in Marib that the war remains only a short drive away. A slight 18-year old in a brown robe and turquoise headscarf, rifle dangling casually over his arm, said the first thing he did when his village of Arhab near the capital Sanaa was overrun by the Houthis was to go to a famous arms market. "I went to Jihana and bought weapons. Then I came to Marib. That was four months ago. Now, God willing, we will fight the Houthis back. Soon we will be in Sanaa," he said, identifying himself only by the nickname 'Abu Arhab".
Heavy weapons
