An explosion on Wednesday ripped through a Yemeni military vehicle in the south of the country, killing five soldiers, while another four civilians died in the ensuing firefight.
The blast hit the vehicle close to a busy market selling qat, the mildly stimulating leaf that Yemenis addictively chew, in the town of Zinjibar, in a province known as a stronghold for Muslim militants, including al-Qaeda.
“We heard the sound of explosions and saw fire coming out of the car. The soldiers were lying on the ground,” eyewitness Ali Dahmash said.
The panicked surviving soldiers began firing in the air, and were joined by soldiers rushing to the scene. Four civilians in the marketplace were killed by the gunfire, and more than 20 were wounded Dahmash said.
Yemen is home to one of the most active branches al-Qaeda, but military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, said they were not sure who the assailants were.
Extremists regularly attack soldiers in the lawless, impoverished country, which is also wracked by pro-democracy demonstrators calling for the ouster of longtime Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
On Wednesday, tens of thousands gathered in Yemen’s major cities, as they have for the past months to reiterate their demand that Saleh step down after more than 30 years in power.
More than 140 people have died since the protests began nearly three months ago.
In the southern province of Aden, a general strike shuttered shops, closed schools and halted commercial transport, in the latest efforts to pressure Saleh to leave.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
The Bolivian government on Friday struck a deal with protesting miners, but was still grappling with blockades and demonstrations by other workers across La Paz. Other groups are still blocking access roads into the city, which is also the seat of the government. Police on Thursday prevented the miners from entering the main square by using tear gas, while the demonstrators hurled stones and explosives with slingshots. Protests against the policies of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz have convulsed the Andean nation since early this month, and roadblocks were choking routes into La Paz throughout Friday, the national road authority said. Miners demanded that Paz
The Philippines said it has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow it to arrest former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s chief drug war enforcer to stand trial in an international tribunal. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week unsealed an arrest warrant against Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, accusing him along with Duterte and other “coperpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder.” Dela Rosa briefly sought refuge in the Philippine Senate last week while asking the Philippine Supreme Court to stop an ongoing attempt by government agents to arrest him. “By his own conduct, he has placed himself outside the protection of
The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” said Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s school of English. The poem was also within the main body of Latin text, she said, calling it “extraordinary.” Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, Caedmon’s Hymn appears within some copies of
RSS