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Yemen’s protesters have expressed their hope that Gaddafi’s demise will breathe new life into their uprising, amid fears that the movement – now in its ninth month – is losing momentum.
"Oh Saleh, oh Saleh, you’re trembling in your sleep!" roared a crowd of rowdy young men in Change Square as they watched footage on a projector of Gaddafi’s blood-soaked corpse being dragged through the streets of Sirte on al-Jazeera.
The protest leader Fuad al-Himiyari said: "I say to Saleh: What comes next? Gaddafi fought like you fought, he was arrogant like you are arrogant, he lied like you lied, and he killed like you killed. If he knew this would be his ending he would never have started it. What is left for you Saleh?"
Others remain fearful that the sight of another toppled dictator will only serve to harden the resolve of their own. "These are dark times for Yemen. Ali Abdullah Saleh will fight harder now. We do not want to endure what the Libyans went through," said Mabkhoot al-Fuaysi, a pharmacist volunteering in the camp’s makeshift hospital.
Sure enough, the celebrations in Change Square were quickly drowned out by the steady thud of explosions as the Republican guard – an elite force headed by Saleh’s son Ahmed – bombarded the nearby base of the 1st armored division, a ragtag military unit under the control of Major General Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar, who sided with the opposition back in March. Protesters are increasingly getting caught in the crossfire as the two sides barrage each other’s bases with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and Katyusha rockets.
The UN security council will vote on Friday on a British-drafted resolution on Yemen that will condemn the government crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators and say those responsible should be held accountable.
The draft resolution, obtained by the Guardian, falls short of the demands made by the Yemeni activist Tawakul Karman, who was awarded the Nobel peace prize earlier this month. For the past three days Karman has been demonstrating with other Yemenis outside the UN headquarters in New York calling on the security council to retract a Gulf Arab plan that would grant immunity to Saleh and his family. She has also called for his assets to be frozen and his case to be referred to the international criminal court in The Hague.
"We reject and refuse any immunity for the criminals," she said in an impassioned speech on Wednesday. "Immunity is against what the UN was founded upon."
VIA Guardian
"The youth’s peaceful revolution is against the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) initiative, especially because it gives immunity to Saleh and his family," Karman told reporters at a demonstration near the United Nations, where she was greeted by a cheering crowd of around 150 Yemeni supporters.
"We don’t think that the Security Council will be trapped in a resolution that will give immunity to the regime," said Karman, who dedicated her Nobel prize to the Arab uprisings and to those killed in the upheavals.
While it urges implementation of the GCC deal, the draft resolution, obtained by Reuters, would have the council say it "stresses that all those responsible for violence, human rights violations and abuses should be held accountable." It did not give any details on how accountability would be achieved.
The human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticized the immunity deal that is central to the GCC plan as well.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon‘s spokesman Martin Nesirky also rejected the idea of an amnesty for Yemen, saying: "It’s vital that there should be no impunity." A spokesman for the U.N. human rights office in Geneva said international law prohibits amnesties for gross violations of human rights.
Council diplomats told Reuters that they hoped the draft resolution, which was penned by Britain in consultation with France, the United States, Russia and China, would be put to a vote and approved before the end of the week.
Russia and China, which vetoed a European-drafted resolution condemning Syria’s crackdown, are not planning to block the Yemen resolution, council diplomats say.
In Yemen’s capital Sanaa, at least six people were killed in the capital on Tuesday in an intensifying crackdown by security forces on protesters demanding an end to Saleh’s 33 years in office, witnesses said. That brought the number of people killed to at least 34 over the last four days, along with 100 injured.
Karman read the crowd a letter she has written to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council demanding their support for peaceful protesters in Yemen and Syria, where a government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters has killed over 3,000 civilians, according to U.N. figures.
VIA STA
The head of the media department of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and six other militants were killed in an air raid on militant outposts in Yemen, and gunmen retaliated by blowing up a gas export pipeline, Yemeni officials and residents said on Saturday.
The Yemeni Defense Ministry said Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian national, died in a raid by Yemeni war planes on militant positions in Shabwa province in southern Yemen late on Friday.
Residents and local officials said they believed the attacks were conducted by foreign aircraft and that there were at least three raids on several targets.
A Yemeni official described al-Banna as one of the most dangerous militants on their wanted list.
Unidentified assailants, believed to be militants, later blew up a gas pipeline which transports gas from Maarib province to Belhaf port on the Arabian Sea. s LNG export facility at Balhaf, which is led by French oil major Total (TOTF.
PA) with three South Korea companies holding stakes, opened in 2009 and was the largest industrial project every carried out in Yemen.
VIA Reuters
Yemen‘s President Ali Abdullah Saleh suggested Saturday that within days he would step down, a promise he has made three times already this year, and analysts said it was yet another stalling tactic.
A government official said Saleh was merely indicating readiness to reach a deal to end months of unrest.
The wily leader, who came to power in 1978, is under pressure from international allies and an array of street activists, armed opponents and opposition parties to make good on promises to hand over power and end a crisis that has raised the spectre of a failed Arab state overrun by militants.
Confusion over Saleh’s intent was familiar fare in a conflict that has dragged on since January when protesters first took to the streets to demand reform and an end to the grip on power that Saleh and his family have had for 33 years.
"I reject power and I will continue to reject it, and I will be leaving power in the coming days," Saleh said in a speech on state television.
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Image via Wikipedia
US Warns Against Yemen’s Inability to Deal with al-Qaeda
John Brennan, the White House’s counter-terrorism Chief recently stated that the al-Qaeda problem in Yemen had morphed into a “powerful domestic insurgency”, well beyond what was once a simple terror threat.
Since president Saleh left Yemen for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in order to receive medical treatments for the wounds he suffered in the assassination attempt carried out against his person back in early June, the terror cell has been raging war against the regime in its southern region of Abyan, forever expanding its hold over the southern territories.
Armed militants took full advantage of the power vacuum left by Saleh’s departure by seizing more towns and villages in Abyan , threatening to now take control over neighboring Oil rich provinces of Mareb and Shabwa.
via US Warns Against Yemen’s Inability to Deal with al-Qaeda – Yemen Post English Newspaper Online.
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- Wounded Civilians Unable to Reach Yemen Hospital (foxnews.com)
There is evidence that separate armed opposition groups are contesting control of territory in south Yemen. Yemeni security forces are attempting to reassert state control in Abyan and in Arhab district in Sana’a.Rival militant groups fought in Jaar in Abyan governorate. Abdul Latif al Sayyed had demanded that al Qaeda militants leave the town; local al Qaeda leader Abu Ali Hadrami refused. At least four militants were killed and seven others injured in the ensuing clashes. Abdul Latif al Sayyed is a supporter of the Southern Movement.Fierce fighting occurred in Arhab district of Sana’a. Twenty-three opposition tribesmen were killed in clashes with elite Republican Guard forces. The Yemen state news agency reported that tribesmen have accused U.S.-designated terrorist Sheikh Abdul Majid al Zindani of sending over 300 fighters into Arhab and Nihm districts in Sana’a.A bomb exploded near an al Houthi-held government administration complex in al Jawf. The blast targeted a meeting of al Houthi leaders in al Matama on Sunday. The al Houthis called the attack a “US intelligence-style criminal act” intended to spark sectarian fighting in Yemen. No evidence was offered supporting the claim. The al Houthis and the Islamist Islah Reform party had signed a ceasefire two days prior to the attack.New evidence may link Iran to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. U.S. officials reported that the Indian Navy intercepted the MV Nafis-I near Mumbai after tracking the ship for a number of days. The ship was allegedly en route to Yemen from Iran and U.S. officials believed it was bringing supplies to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The Indian Navy found primarily food and supplies aboard the ship, alongside some weapons AK-47s and a pistol.
via Yemen Crisis Situation Reports: Update 53 Critical Threats.