SANA’A: At least 210 people have been killed in two months of fighting between Shia Houthis and ultra-conservative Sunni Salafis in northern Yemen, a Salafi spokesman said yesterday.
The violence erupted on October 30 when the Houthi rebels who control much of the northern Saada province accused Salafis in the town of Damaj of recruiting thousands of foreign fighters to prepare to attack them.
The Salafis, who follow a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam, say the foreigners are students seeking to deepen their knowledge of Islam in the town’s Dar Al Hadith seminary. Surour Al Wadi’i, a Salafi spokesman, said the death toll among Salafis had risen to 210, with 620 wounded. A spokesman for the Houthis, Ali Al Bakhity, said no casualty figures were available for the Houthis.
Sectarian rivalry in Damaj has cast a shadow over reconciliation efforts in Yemen, a neighbour of top oil exporter Saudi Arabia and home to one of Al Qaeda’s most active wings.
Fighting between the two sides in Saada and adjacent provinces stopped as a ceasefire deal took hold on Saturday. Several previous ceasefires have failed. The latest deal includes an agreement by the Salafis to leave Damaj and move to the town of Hadida and stipulates that the foreign students should go home, according to the ceasefire document.
It gives Yehia Al Hagouri, the Salafi leader and a signatory to the ceasefire, four days to leave along with his followers. Wadi’i, the Salafi spokesman, criticised the deal saying it would strengthen the hand of the Houthis, who belong to the Zaydi branch of Shia, on all of Saada and eradicate any Sunni presence in the province.
Leader of 2004 Saudi attack gets death penalty
DUBAI: A Saudi court yesterday sentenced the leader of a militant cell involved in a suicide attack on the offices of a foreign company in the Red Sea city of Yanbu nearly 10 years ago in which five Westerners were killed, Saudi media reported.
State news agency SPA said 10 others received sentences of three to 12 years for assisting the attack.
The May, 2004 attack was part of a campaign launched by Al Qaeda in 2003 intended to destabilise the US-allied kingdom. Saudi captured or killed many militants in 2006.
Gunmen killed two Americans, two Britons and an Australian at the firm’s offices in the Saudi oil and petrochemical hub.
SPA did not name the man sentenced to death or the other convicted militants, identifying them only by numbers.
“Suspect number one was convicted of participating with the terrorist cell that carried out the suicide operation at one of the companies in Yanbu,” SPA said, without elaborating on his position in the cell.Reuters
