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| Arabia | |
| 2 dead in Sanaa grenade attack | |
| 2006-04-24 | |
Two people were killed and 18 more wounded yesterday when an attacker hurled a grenade into a crowded market in the Yemeni capital Sanaa where people were buying a popular narcotic plant. "Two men became embroiled in a row in the market. One man hit the other in the chest, who responded by throwing a hand grenade into the air," a police official said.
Security forces sealed off the area and launched a hunt for the man who fled after throwing the device. Earlier, witnesses and police had reported it was a bomb explosion. A number of terrorism-related cases involving Islamist militants are currently under way in Yemen, one of the poorest countries on the planet. An official journal said earlier this month that 172 people were awaiting trial in Yemen for suspected links to Al-Qaeda. Many more have already been tried. Yemen is also facing an uprising by members of the minority Zaidi community, which has left hundreds of people dead over the past two years. The Zaidis are an offshoot of Shiite Islam and are dominant in northwestern Yemen, but form a minority in the mainly Sunni country. President Ali Abullah Saleh has accused Zaidi rebels of seeking to overthrow his republican regime. The rebels reject as illegitimate his government, which seized power in a 1962 coup known as the September 26 revolution, overthrowing the Zaidi imamate. | |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |