As many as 15,000 civilians have now fled al-Hota (Huta), the southern Yemeni town which has been besieged by the military since Sunday.
Between 80 and 100 al-Qaeda militants are said to be holed up in the town (estimated population 20,000-25,000) and the surrounding...
Blog archive: Yemen
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22nd September 2010
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21st September 2010Between 8,000 and 12,000 people have fled their homes in al-Hota, southern Yemen, in what is said to be a battle between government forces and al-Qaeda militants, according to Red Crescent sources in the area. The town, in Shabwa province, has reportedly been subjected to...
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19th September 2010In Yemen, the deputy governor of Abyan province, Ahmed al-Rahawi, survived an assassination attempt yesterday when his convoy was ambushed in al-Rai district of Jaar. AFP says a roadside bomb exploded, injuring three soldiers and a fourth person who was in al-Rahawi's car. A civilian...
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14th September 2010The international Friends of Yemen group must do more than fight terrorism and provide economic aid, Christophe Wilcke of Human Right Watch argues in an article for the Yemen Times. "If Yemen’s friends don’t tie economic assistance to improvements in the country’s rapidly...
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11th September 2010Al-Qaeda's campaign to demoralise the security forces in souther Yemen has taken a new twist. Following a series of assassinations of officers, the militants have issued a list of 55 names – 31 state security officers, 15 members of the judiciary police and nine members of...
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1st September 2010A couple of useful articles about Yemen in the September issue of The Majalla. In the first, Professor Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics discusses Yemen's summer of discontent. He writes: What is alarming about the growing brazenness and activism of [al-Qaeda in the...
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29th August 2010With mediation from Qatar, the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government have signed an agreement aimed at consolidating the ceasefire announced last February. Reuters reports: "Among the main points of the agreement, rebels were required to return stolen Yemeni military weapons...
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25th August 2010Thousands of Yemenis – possibly as many as 80,000, according to al-Jazeera – are reported to to have fled their homes in Lawdar (or Loder) as the authorities conduct a massive house-to-house search ostensibly aimed at rooting out al-Qaeda militants. Details are sketchy because the city...
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25th August 2010Amnesty International says it is "extremely likely" that Saudi Arabia used British-supplied Tornado warplanes to bomb northern Yemenat the height of the Houthi conflict last year. Saudi forces came to the aid of the Yemeni military against the rebels in November and operations...
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23rd August 2010After spending two months among the jihadists in southern Yemen, Iraqi-born journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad presents the first of two reports for the Guardian. Choice quote: At Faisal's house, I asked him what he thought of the government's attempt to crack down on al-Qaida...
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22nd August 2010If you've never sampled the delights of freshly-caught Yemeni salmon, don't worry. Neither has anyone else. Yemen has no permanent rivers and, consequently, no salmon. 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen' is the title of a comic/satirical novelby Paul Torday which won a couple of awards...
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21st August 2010In the latest fighting in southern Yemen, a dozen or more soldiers and several civilians were killed during a battle near the marketplace in Lawdar, Abyan province, yesterday. The ruling party's website blames "terrorist elements from al-Qaeda and some outlaw elements...
