The Saudi-led military coalition in war-torn Yemen on Monday rejected a declaration of self-rule by separatists in the country’s south and demanded “an end to any escalatory actions”. The breakaway declaration made Sunday threatens to reignite a “war within a war” in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, which is already gripped by what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. The secessionists’ move significantly complicates the country’s five-year-old wider conflict, fought by the Saudi-led coalition and Yemen’s internationally recognised government against Iran-backed Huthi rebels who control much of the north including the capital Sanaa.