SANAA - More than 30 people were killed or wounded Wednesday in fierce clashes between security forces and supporters of a slain rebel preacher who have been locked in fighting in northwest Yemen, military and tribal sources said. Heavy fighting pitted army troops and counter-terrorism units against the rebels in the Al-Shafia and Wadi Nushur (Nushur Valley) areas of Saada province, the sources said. | Once the Yemeni's get their teeth in ya, they don't let go. |
Government forces were trying to advance toward the Wadi Nushur stronghold of the father of slain preacher Sheikh Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi, who was killed by the army last year. Authorities say Badr Eddin al-Huthi has become the spiritual leader of his son's followers from the Faithful Youth movement. | Dad took over sonny's business, normally it's the other way around. |
Both military and tribal sources said at least 30 people from both sides were killed or wounded in Wednesday's fighting, but could not give a more specific breakdown. Around 110 people had been reported killed, and dozens more wounded, since the violence erupted in the mountainous region on March 28. The deputy governor of Saada, Hassan Mannaa, escaped an ambush laid by the rebels in the town of Saada Wednesday, a source close to Mannaa said. But five of his bodyguards were seriously wounded when his car came under fire. The government announced last September that the army had killed Hussein al-Huthi, a radical preacher from the minority Zaidi community, nearly three months after he started a rebellion in the mountainous northwest. The uprising, near the border with Saudi Arabia, triggered clashes which left more than 400 people dead. The Zaidis are a moderate Shiite Muslim sect dominant in northwest Yemen but in the minority in the mainly Sunni country. | So they'd be getting support from Iran then? |
Authorities had accused Huthi of seeking to foment sectarian strife, but he said last July the conflict was a result of his anti-US stand. |