Government forces bombed Shiite rebels in northern Yemen on Wednesday, killing dozens and escalating a conflict along the Saudi border that could further destabilize the US-allied country as it faces a resurgent threat from al-Qaeda.
The offensive, which started late on Tuesday, followed claims by local officials and rebels that they had seized more of northern Saada Province from government troops. A high-level security committee, headed by Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, promised to crush the rebels “with an iron-fist.”
A rebel spokesman said 15 civilians died in an air strike on Wednesday at an outdoor market near the town of Haydan in Saada. A local government official said 20 rebels were killed. The discrepancy in the toll could not immediately be reconciled. A local Health Ministry official said 12 others died in fighting across Saada and 51 were injured. Local officials and the rebels said hundreds have fled the clashes.
The officials in Saada spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The five-year-old rebellion in Saada, which borders predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia, pits Shiite Muslims against Yemen’s Sunni-led government. The impoverished Arabian peninsula country is already battling a separate uprising to the south and a resurgent al-Qaeda.
The government exerts little authority outside the cities and has tried repeatedly to suppress the Saada rebels, with little success.
The stability of Yemen — the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden — is a key concern for both Saudi Arabia and the US.
Christopher Boucek, a Yemen expert at the Carnegie Endowment, said the Saada fighting “right next door to the world’s biggest oil producer” compounds the region’s security threat and underscores Yemen’s weaknesses.
Saudi Arabia fears the conflict could make its own disgruntled Shiite tribes more restive.
Rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdel-Salam said the bombing culminated in the strike on Haydan. He said some missiles fell in residential areas, killing civilians and destroying homes.
“We remind the authorities that we are totally ready to confront their aggression and their loss will be more than previous rounds,” Abdel-Salam said in a statement.
A rebel leader, Saleh Habra, said only one fighter was killed in the last four days of fighting. He accused the government of targeting villagers in the widened offensive.
The Shiite rebels complain the government ignores their needs and has allowed Wahhabis — people adhering to an ultraconservative version of Sunni Islam found in neighboring Saudi Arabia — too strong of a voice in the country. The Wahhabis, who consider Shiites to be heretics, gained influence after helping the Yemeni government win the 1994 civil war with the secessionist south.
The UN refugee agency official in northern Yemen, Claire Bourgeois, said the organization was looking to assist at least 1,500 families displaced in the area of Malahidh, where some of the worst fighting took place on Wednesday.
“We fear the numbers could be much higher, many people fled their homes in an emergency, so we are assuming they didn’t take necessities with them,” she said.
UN official Lina al-Mujahed said more than 230 families had arrived in the provincial capital after traveling hundreds of kilometers. Al-Mujahed said food and tents had been distributed to half of them.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS