WASHINGTON: The United States is closing its embassy in Yemen amid political deadlock and deteriorating security conditions after the takeover of the country by Shiite rebels, two U.S. officials said.

The officials said that diplomats were being evacuated from the country Tuesday and that the embassy in Sanaa would suspend operations until conditions improve. Yemen has been in crisis for months with Iran-linked Shiite Houthi rebels besieging the capital and then taking control. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the closure publicly on the record.

Marines providing the security at the embassy will also likely leave, officials said, but American forces conducting counterterrorism missions against Al-Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate in other parts of the country would not be affected.

Spokesmen at the Pentagon and State Department had no immediate comment on the closure.

Although operations against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula will continue, the closure of the embassy will be seen as a blow to the Obama administration, which has held up its partnership with ousted Yemeni President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi’s government as a model for his strategy in combatting terrorism, particularly in unstable countries.

The embassy closure will also complicate the CIA’s operations in Yemen, U.S. intelligence officials acknowledge. Although CIA officers could continue to work out of U.S. military installations, many intelligence operations are run from embassies, and the CIA lost visibility on Syria when that embassy was evacuated in 2012. The CIA’s main role in Yemen is to gather intelligence about members of AQAP and occasionally kill them with drone strikes.

The Houthis last week dissolved parliament and formally took over after months of clashes. They then placed President Hadi and his Cabinet ministers under house arrest. Hadi and the ministers later resigned in protest.

Earlier Tuesday, Yemeni military officials said the Houthis, aided by troops loyal to Hadi’s predecessor, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, took full control of the key central province of Bayda province.

Bayda is the gateway to the country’s south, which remains in the hands of pro-independence southerners and to the strategic oil-rich Maarib province, to the east, also still not in rebel hands.

The U.S. Embassy in Yemen is the third in an Arab country that has closed since the turmoil of the Arab spring began in December 2010. The other two were embassies in Damascus, Syria and Tripoli, Libya. The embassy in Damascus was closed in Feb 2012 and the embassy in Tripoli was closed in July 2014.

The embassy in Yemen was operating with only a small portion of its usual diplomatic staff and had closed to the public for all but emergency services in January.

The leader of the Houthi rebel group said Tuesday is was in everyone’s interests to restore stability to the country. “This is an important, large country, rich in resources which its people don’t benefit from and has a very, very important geographic position. It’s in the interest of every power, domestic and foreign, to stabilize this country,” Abdel Malik al-Houthi said in a televised speech.

“Any attempt to sow chaos or harm this country will have its repercussions on the interests of these powers,” he added.