Hadi evacuated after planes reportedly hit Aden presidential compound

The presidential palace in the southern city of Aden was evacuated after an incident on Thursday in which planes may have struck the compound.

Embattled President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who moved to the palace from the capital Sanaa last month, has been forced into hiding.

In the far east of the country, security officials raised their level of preparedness in the provinces of Hadramaut and Shabwa due to "the probability of a terrorist attack".

Yemen's Interior Ministry released a statement on Thursday saying they had received "confirmed information about the existence of Islamic State agents" in Hadramaut.

In Yemen's far southern city of Aden, a total of eleven people were killed, according to Anadolu Agency, when armed clashes broke out near the presidential palace between forces allied to President Hadi and a group of soldiers led by Colonel Abdel Hafez al-Sakkaf.

Sakkaf was dismissed by Hadi earlier this month, but refused to step down.

Sakkaf has now turned himself in to the governor of the neighbouring Lahij governorate - Aden governor Abdel Aziz Habtoor said that Sakkaf and his troops would be subject to a fair military trial.

However, Sakkaf reportedly escaped during armed clashes, and security forces have since launched a search.

Habtoor also alleged that Sakkaf had attempted to launch a military coup, supported by the Houthi militias who control the capital and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who stepped down in 2012 after a wave of popular protest.

Hadi spoke to the press from his hideout on Thursday, saying he had survived four assassination attempts in recent days, and was ready to face more.

Conflicting reports have emerged about Thursday morning's attack on the presidential palace, with some suggesting the planes struck the hill-top compound where Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Abdel Hadi has been living since he fled Sanaa in February.

"President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and his aides have been evacuated from the palace after it was struck by a warplane," the official told journalists on condition of anonymity.

But others, including Yemen's spokesperson based in Washington, D.C., who said on social media that the planes had fired at the compound, tweeted minutes later to say he was receiving conflicting reports about whether jets had bombed the palace.

"One thing for sure, situation flared up," he tweeted. 

A government official had earlier told AA that a Houthi plane had broken the sound barrier over the palace.

"Air-defense systems forced the plane to fly at high altitudes," he said.

The strikes come after clashes broke out in the southern city on Thursday morning between supporters and Hadi opponents.

The clashes, which started in Aden's Khor Maksar distrcit and then spread to residential districts, eventually resulted in the closure of the airport.

A daytime curfew imposed in the city, considered by many locals to be the capital of south Yemen, was lifted later in the afternoon, the governor told al-Arabiya news channel.

There were reports after the curfew was lifted that a local hospital run by Doctors Without Borders was still receiving wounded, and had treated up to 50 people by Thursday afternoon.