Local security officials said up to 20 soldiers were killed when Yemen’s air force mistakenly bombed a military site in the south of the country on Sunday, but government and military sources denied the reports.
“We are not sure of the number yet, but some 18 or 20 soldiers were killed, the plane bombed a small military site in Abyan. They meant to target an al-Qaeda hideout,” a security official said by telephone from the flashpoint Abyan Province.
A defense ministry source denied “the false news that Yemeni soldiers were killed in an accidental Yemeni plane strike.”
Yemen’s army is fighting to regain territory lost to suspected al-Qaeda operatives during months of political upheaval that have weakened central government control over parts of the country, notably Abyan.
A military source in the area said there was some confusion over what happened in several sites of fighting in Abyan on Sunday.
He said there had been several air strikes and al-Qaeda attacks, and said the soldiers’ deaths were not caused by a botched strike, but by a militant ambush on an army site.
The government said its troops had pushed Islamist fighters out of Abyan’s capital Zinjibar last month, but clashes continue to flare there.
Local officials said nine soldiers were killed when militants ambushed government forces in the east of the city on Sunday. Another 23 were injured.
Separately, but also in Zinjibar, four more soldiers died in combat with gunmen and 15 militants were killed in air strikes on Sunday, local officials and residents said.
Since popular protests against Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh paralyzed Yemen earlier this year, international powers have feared growing lawlessness might embolden al-Qaeda’s local wing and imperil shipping routes via the Red Sea.
Saleh’s opponents accuse him of exaggerating the threat of al-Qaeda and even encouraging militancy to scare Saudi Arabia and the US into backing him.
Diplomats said Western countries are hoping to step up pressure on Saleh to resign with a proposed UN Security Council resolution, as frustration grows over fruitless power transition talks.
“The international community has decided we need to up the pressure now,” one senior western diplomat in Sana’a said. “No decision has been taken yet over what type of resolution we might try ... but we do need to move beyond statements now.”
Saleh had been in Saudi Arabia since June recovering from an attempt on his life. His surprise comeback coincided with a burst of bloodshed in the capital when a months-old uneasy stalemate gave way to a military showdown between pro and anti-Saleh forces.
Violence has been sporadic since Saleh’s return, but many Yemenis and analysts fear the country could eventually slide into an even deadlier confrontation, if not civil war.
There were clashes again in Sana’a on Sunday, with residents reporting gunfire near the base of top general Ali Mohsen, who defected from Saleh in March and threw his weight behind protests calling for an end to his 33-year rule.
Residents said men were digging trenches in front of the capital’s presidential palace, raising concern they were preparing for more fighting.
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
Former Chinese ministers of national defense Wei Fenghe(魏鳳和) and Li Shangfu (李尚福) were both sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve over graft charges, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday, underscoring the severity of the purge in the military. The armed forces have been one of the main targets of a broad corruption crackdown ordered by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after coming to power in 2012. The purges reached the elite Rocket Force, which oversees nuclear weapons as well as conventional missiles, in 2023. Earlier this year they escalated further, resulting in the removal of the top general in
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
RSS