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| Arabia | ||
| Clashes In Yemen Kill More Than 100 in 5 days | ||
| 2007-02-20 | ||
| The ongoing clashes between the Yemeni army and followers of a Shiite rebel leader the northern part of the country, have killed more than 100 people in the past five days, Yemeni military officials said Monday. About 90 of those killed were in the Yemeni army, including six security forces who were killed on Monday, an army official said. Government forces have fired artillery bombardments over the areas where followers of Abdel-Malek al-Hawthi are believed to using as hideouts in Saada, about 112 miles (180 kilometers) north of the Yemeni capital, San'a, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Close to 200 army and police officers have been killed in clashes in recent weeks.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh accused the rebels on Monday of being "ignorant forces of darkness who adopted deviant terrorist and racist ideas ... which don't believe in democracy or freedom. They are agents who have sold themselves to harm the nation and its interests," according to Yemen's official news agency. Last week, members of the Yemen Supreme Defense Council voiced concerns, saying the Shiite rebels were receiving funds and assistance from outside countries, according to one of the council's members.
Al-Hawthi denied in an interview with al-Nada, a local independent paper, that his group had Iranian or Libyan links and accused the government of resorting to violence to end the conflict, instead of taking peaceful paths. The rebels are a Shiite Muslim group known as "The Young Faithful Believers" that accuse the government of being corrupt and too close to the West. The government has been fighting the rebels since June 2004 when rebel Shiite cleric Hussein Badr Eddin al-Hawthi — of the al-Hawthi tribe — led his forces in an uprising. The cleric was killed in clashes with government troops in September 2004. More than 700 officers and police have been killed since then until beginning of the latest confrontation, which started late last month. The government had accused Abdel-Malek al-Hawthi of sedition, forming an illegal armed group and inciting anti-American sentiment. His loyalists say authorities have tried to silence the cleric's criticism of corruption. | ||
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #3 Them clashes were always dangerous, them killl people as they please. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-02-20 23:09 |
| #2 There was a nasty civil war there in the 1960s but it was basically Saudi proxies vs. Egyptian proxies (with the USSR helping the Egyptian proxies). |
| Posted by: mhw 2007-02-20 09:41 |
| #1 The ongoing clashes ... have killed more than 100 people in the past five days ... About 90 of those killed were in the Yemeni army 10:90 |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2007-02-20 06:11 |