Less than three days after a high-ranking Security Belt officer and a Yemeni Coast Guard marine were killed in the interim capital Aden, the Security Belt forces have increased troop levels in several Adeni neighborhoods. 

The Security Belt, loyal to the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC), reinforced existing checkpoints and setup new ones in the Al-Buraiqa, Sheikh Othman and Khormaksar neighborhoods, a security official in Aden who preferred not to be named told Almasdar Online.  

The group also deployed forces to positions along the borders between the Sheikh Osman, Mansoura, Crater and Khormaksar neighborhoods, according to the official.

Over the weekend, ISIS claimed responsibility for the assassination of the Security Belt’s Deputy Director of Personnel Management in Aden Colonel Mohammed Saleh Al-Radfani, and another masked gunman killed a coast guardsman in the Mansoura neighborhood near an STC checkpoint at the Caltex roundabout.

Other killings by unidentified gunmen over the past week include a soldier in the Sheikh Osman neighborhood and a police officer in the Mansoura neighborhood. Brig. Gen. Musfer al-Harithi, director of the Ministry of Defence's monitoring and inspection department, said he survived an assassination attempt Thursday evening.

The string of assassinations come as Saudi Arabia tries to implement the first steps of a power sharing deal, known as the Riyadh agreement, between the STC and Yemen’s internationally recognized government, after months of fighting for control of southern Yemeni governorates threatened to open a new front in Yemen’s war. 

Lingering distrust between forces loyal the STC and the national army–which form the main anti-Houthi alliance in Yemen’s broader war–has boiled over in recent days in Abyan governorate east of Aden.