sana’a: Armed Shia rebels pushed into Yemen’s capital Sana’a after clashing with the army in the city’s northwest outskirts on yesterday, security sources and residents said, in an escalation of weeks of fighting and protests. Residents of northwest Al Shamlan district said the Shia Houthi gunmen were now advancing along Thalatheen Street, a major route into the western edge of the city. The fighting has further destabilised an impoverished country also struggling to overcome a secessionist movement in its south, the spread of an Al Qaeda insurgency and other threats. The stability of Yemen is a priority for the United States and its Gulf Arab allies because of its strategic position next to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia and shipping lanes which run through the Gulf of Aden. A military source said Houthi gunmen had also attacked an army camp on the southern entrance of the capital, but soldiers repelled the assault.
Egypt targets last bastion of Brotherhood
CAIRO: Egypt has moved to close down one of the last bastions of Muslim Brotherhood dissent with sweeping new rules to curtail violent protest at Al Azhar University, among the world’s most venerable centres of Islamic learning. Egypt has banned the Muslim Brotherhood and jailed thousands of its supporters since July 2013, when then-army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi overthrew Mohamed Mursi, Egypt’s first freely elected president and a senior member of the group. As the noose tightened around the Brotherhood, Al Azhar emerged as a hotspot in its battle against Egypt’s new rulers. The grand mufti, Egypt’s top religious authority, and the grand imam of Al Azhar, have long lent their prestige to those in power and issued religious edicts to back government policy. But the Brotherhood enjoys strong support within the student body as well as among faculty members, many of whom oppose Sisi and his crackdown on Egypt’s oldest Islamist movement.
Saudi fund to restore Al Azhar mosque
CAIRO: Saudi Arabia has agreed to fund the restoration of Cairo’s Al Azhar mosque in recognition of its role as a “beacon of moderate Islam,” the Egyptian president’s office said. The announcement came after talks between President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and visiting Saudi intelligence chief Prince Khaled bin Bandar bin Abdel Aziz on the coalition Washington is building against the Islamic State group (IS) in Iraq and Syria. The 1,000 year-old mosque spreads over a hectare in the ancient heart of Cairo and oversees a network of seminaries that form Sunni Islam’s highest seat of learning. agencies
