The
North Yemen Civil War was fought in
North Yemen from 1962 to 1970 between royalist partisans of the
Mutawakkilite Kingdom and supporters of the
Yemen Arab Republic. The war began with a
coup d'état carried out in 1962 by revolutionary republicans led by the army under the command of
Abdullah as-Sallal, who dethroned the newly crowned Imam
Muhammad al-Badr and declared Yemen a republic under his presidency. The Imam escaped to the
Saudi Arabian border where he rallied popular support from northern Shia tribes to retake power, escalating shortly to a full-scale civil war.