Monday 4 December 2017

Yemen's Houthi: Ali Abdulla Saleh killed for 'treason'

The leader of Yemen's Houthi rebels
Yemen's Houthi: Ali Abdulla Saleh killed for 'treason'
AL  JAZEERA

The leader of Yemen's Houthi rebels has praised the death of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country's overthrown president, as a victory against a Saudi-led military coalition that Yemen has been battling.

Saleh's party has confirmed reports that he was killed in a roadside ambush on Monday outside the capital, Sanaa, after switching sides in the civil war, abandoning his Iran-aligned Houthi allies in favour of the Saudi-led coalition.

In a lengthy televised speech aired on the Houthi-run Al Masirah TV network, Abdul Malik al-Houthi said his fighters killed Saleh for his "treason" and congratulated Yemenis "on this historic, exceptional and great day in which the conspiracy of betrayal and treason failed, this black day for the forces of the aggression".

He said the uprising of Saleh's loyalists against the Houthi group was the greatest threat the Arabian Peninsula country had faced, but that it was defeated in three days.

He said the Houthi group - officially called Ansar Allah (Partisans of God) - would maintain the country's republican system and would not seek vengeance against Saleh's party.

"The problem is not with the General People's Congress (GPC) as a party or with its members," Houthi said.

The GPC was Yemen's ruling party under Saleh but is now divided.

Several warnings

Without mentioning Saleh by name, Houthi said that he knew about Saleh's communication with the coalition and his efforts to turn against the Houthi group.

Houthi also said he had sent several warnings to Saleh.

"We have notified the leader of the traitor and criminal militias to retract, be wise, to stop his militias from continuing committing crimes," he said.

"Today is the day of the fall of the conspiracy of betrayal and treason. It's a dark day for the forces of the coalition."

Houthi also praised a missile launch announced by the group towards the UAE this week as a message against its enemies, advising against foreign investment in the UAE and Saudi Arabia as their campaign in Yemen continues.

The Houthi rebels had similarly fired a missile towards Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh last month, which official media said had been intercepted by the kingdom's air defence.

"The official story was clear: Saudi forces shot down a ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebel group last month at Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh. It was a victory for the Saudis and for the United States, which supplied the Patriot missile defense system," New York Times said in a report on Monday.

However, evidence analysed by a research team of missile experts at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, indicate that the missile's warhead flew unimpeded over Saudi defences and nearly hit its target, Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport, according to the report.

The Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the November 5 explosion in Riyadh, saying they fired a long-range ballistic missile that travelled more than 800km over the border with Saudi Arabia.

A spokesman for the rebels told Al Jazeera they launched a Burkan 2-H missile - a Scud-type missile with a range of more than 800km - towards Riyadh.

Videos on social media that evening showed smoke rising from an area near the King Khalid International Airport.

The Middlebury Institute analysis found that the warhead detonated so close to the domestic terminal that people jumped out of their seats.

"The findings show that the Iranian-backed Houthis, once a ragtag group of rebels, have grown powerful enough to strike major targets in Saudi Arabia, possibly shifting the balance of their years-long war," the New York Times said.

Houthi origins

The Houthi rebels, seen at present as the most powerful political faction in Yemen, emerged in the 1990s as a movement to revive the Zaidi Shia traditions of Yemen's historically dominant northern highlands.

The group originated in the northwestern province of Saada to protest at what their followers said was discrimination against them and their stronghold by the central government.

A crackdown by Saleh, then Yemen's president, in 2004 led to the killing of founder Hussein al-Houthi, followed by six military campaigns to quell guerrilla warfare in the group's stronghold of Saada.

His younger brother Abdul Malek took over and stepped up the group's rhetoric against the government and its alliance with the US.

In 2011, the eruption of protests in Yemen against Saleh's long rule expanded the Houthis' clout beyond Saada. Their populist and anti-corruption rhetoric won them some support in Sunni areas too.

Under a UN-sponsored power transfer deal, Saleh stepped down and was replaced by Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, his deputy, in 2012.

In July 2014, the Houthis took advantage of an unpopular move by the government to cut fuel subsidies and called for mass demonstrations in Sanaa.

In September, Houthi rebels took control of Sanaa and have since swept across the country.

On Monday, Hadi urged Yemenis to unite against the Houthi rebels, describing them as "Iranian militias".

Hadi, who has been self-imposed exile in Riyadh in recent past years, delivered his televised speech just hours after the killing of Saleh.

"I call on all Yemenis, in all the provinces, which are still under the rule of these criminal and terrorist militias, to rise up in their face and resist them. And our army will be the victor," he said.

"We are with you, in the same trench, and with one goal, which is battling for the republic and the revolution, and the expulsion of the Iranian Houthi militias."

Fighting and air strikes in Yemen's Sanaa trap civilians and halt aid: U.N.


Fighting and air strikes in Yemen's Sanaa trap civilians and halt aid: U.N.

Reuters Staff

GENEVA (Reuters) - Fighting and air strikes have intensified in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, where roads are blocked and tanks are deployed on many streets, trapping civilians and halting delivery of vital aid including fuel to supply clean water, the United Nations said on Monday.

Some of the fiercest clashes are around the diplomatic area near the U.N. compound, while aid flights in and out of Sanaa airport have been suspended, the world body said in a statement following its appeal for a humanitarian pause on Tuesday.


“The escalating situation threatens to push the barely functioning basic services ... to a standstill. These services have already been seriously compromised with the latest shock of the impact of the blockade,” it said, adding that fighting had also spread to other governorates, such as Hajjah.

Yemen's Saleh killed by Houthi fighters

Yemen's Saleh killed in RPG, gun attack on his car, party confirms death
Reuters | Published — Monday 4 December 2017


Yemeni former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. (Reuters)

SANAA/DUBAI: Officials in Ali Abdullah Saleh’s General People’s Congress party (GPC) confirmed to Reuters that the former Yemeni president and party leader has been killed outside Sanaa, in what sources in the Houthi group said was an RPG and gun attack.

The GPC officials said Saleh was killed south of the capital Sanaa along with the assistant secretary-general of the GPC, Yasser Al-Awadi.

Sources in the Houthi group said fighters stopped his armored vehicle with an RPG rocket and then shot him dead.

A Houthi video distributed on social media showed what appeared to be Saleh’s body, clad in grey clothes and being carried out on a red blanket. The side of his head bore a deep wound.
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Unverified footage that circulated earlier on social media showed armed militiamen unfurling a blanket containing the corpse and shouting, “Praise God!” and “Hey Ali Affash!,” another last name for Saleh.

In a televised address Monday evening, Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi called on all citizens in all provinces of the country to rise up against the Houthi militias.

The radio station of the Houthi-run Yemeni Interior Ministry first reported Saleh’s death but his party quickly denied this to Reuters, saying he was still leading his forces in Sanaa.

Earlier on Monday, Houthi forces blew up Saleh’s house in Sanaa and came under aerial attack by Saudi-led coalition warplanes for a second day, residents said.

Saleh’s loyalists have lost ground on the sixth day of heavy urban warfare with the Houthis during which the death toll has jumped to at least 125 with 238 wounded, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“We are supporting the main hospitals in Sanaa who urgently need war-wounded kits,” ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said in Geneva. “We are also looking at donating dead body bags to hospitals which are actually asking for them and hope to donate fuel to the main hospitals because they depend on generators.”

The United Nations called for a humanitarian pause in Sanaa between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to allow civilians to leave their homes, aid workers to reach them, and the wounded to get medical care.

STREETS ARE “BATTLEGROUNDS“

Jamie McGoldrick, UN humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, said in a statement that the streets of Sanaa had become “battlegrounds” and that aid workers “remain in lockdown.”

McGoldrick warned the warring parties that any deliberate attacks on civilians and against civilian and medical infrastructure are “clear violations of international humanitarian law and may constitute war crimes.”

Sanaa residents reported intense fighting overnight and into the morning with families cowering in their homes as explosions rocked the city. Coalition air strikes hammered Houthi positions in an apparent bid to shore up Saleh’s forces, witnesses said.

The realignment of Saleh’s forces with the Saudis would mark a significant turn in a war that is part of a wider struggle between regional powers Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Yemen’s protracted bloodshed has compounded the woes of one of the Arab world’s poorest countries and left at least 10,000 dead as hunger and disease have spread.

At the United Nations, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the warring parties to stop all ground and air assaults. He also called for the resumption of all commercial imports into Yemen, saying millions of children, women and men were at risk of mass hunger, disease and death.

However, in a speech late on Sunday, Saleh formally annulled his alliance with the Houthis and pledged to step up his fight.

Saleh, who dominated Yemen’s heavily armed tribal society for 33 years before quitting in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, and the Shiite Muslim Houthis had made common cause against Hadi loyalists.

But they vied for supremacy over the territory they ran together, including Sanaa, which the Houthis seized in September 2014, and their feud burst into open combat on Wednesday.
Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam claimed significant gains in the battle for Sanaa on Monday.

“With the aid and approval of God, the security forces backed up by wide popular support were able last night to cleanse the areas in which the militias of treason and betrayal were deployed,” he said in a statement.

The Houthi movement’s TV channel Al-Masirah and witnesses said Houthi fighters had seized the downtown home of Saleh’s nephew Tareq, an army general.

Residents said the warring sides traded heavy automatic and artillery fire as the Houthis advanced in the central Political District, which is a redoubt of Saleh and his family.

“We lived through days of terror. Houthi tanks have been firing and the shells were falling on our neighborhood,” said Mohammed Al-MadHajji, who lives in the frontline district.

“The fighting has been so violent we feel we could die at any moment. We can’t get out of our homes.”

Source: Arab News

அநுரா ஆட்சியில் செல்வினின் பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபைத் தலைவர் பொறுப்பு பறிப்பு!

அநுரா ஆட்சியில் செல்வினின் பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபைத் தலைவர் பொறுப்பு பறிப்பு! பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபைத் தலைவராக இரானியேஸ் செல்வின் அவர்களைப் பொறுப்ப...