Yemeni tribesmen brought down a warplane and captured its pilot yesterday in an area northeast of the capital, where the country’s air force was bombarding armed pro-opposition tribesmen, a tribal source said.
A military official said the plane, a Russian-made Sukhoi fighter, had been shot down while conducting a routine missionand held opposition leaders “responsible for the incident,” Saba state news agency.
The tribal source said fighters shot down the plane using anti-aircraft weapons and detained the pilot when he jumped from the wreckage in the mountainous area of Naham.
Photo: AFP
The jetfighter was downed near Arhab, 40km north of the capital, where armed tribesmen have been locked in combat with the elite Republican Guard, led by Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s son Ahmed, witnesses said.
Some tribes have aligned with protesters seeking to oust Saleh, who unexpectedly returned to Yemen last Friday from Saudi Arabia during a wave of violence in the capital that left more than 100 people dead.
On Sunday, tribesmen attacked a military base in Naham, stealing arms and killing a general. Three tribesmen were also killed in the fighting.
Meanwhile, Yemeni Defense Minister Mohammed Nasser Ali survived a suicide bomb attack on his convoy in the south on Tuesday, while thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital repeating their calls for the president to quit.
The blast in Aden wounded seven soldiers traveling in the lead vehicle of the ministerial motorcade, but Ali, who was riding in the second car, was unharmed, a local official said.
In Aden, officials said what they initially thought was a remote-controlled bomb now appeared to have been a suicide attack. Investigators found the body of a 19-year-old inside a car that exploded and concluded he was the bomber.
A security official said the attack was consistent with al-Qaeda’s tactics.
It was the second time in a month that the Ali has narrowly escaped with his life. In August, his convoy hit a landmine in the flashpoint province of Abyan, where al-Qaeda linked militants have seized several cities in the coastal province.
Since popular protests against Saleh broke out earlier this year, Islamist militants suspected of links to al-Qaeda have tightened their grip on the south and have repeatedly targeted troops and security officials.
International powers fear growing lawlessness in Yemen could embolden al-Qaeda’s local wing and imperil strategic shipping routes.
However, a greater concern is the shaky calm that now pervades the capital Sana’a, where observers say a surge of fighting last week between the military and soldiers who have defected risks sparking civil war on the doorstep of Saudi Arabia.
Additional reporting by AFP
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