Southern Arabia ' news in English media

[natm]

[فقط الأعضاء المسجلين والمفعلين يمكنهم رؤية الوصلات . إضغط هنا للتسجيل]
At least two policemen have been killed in clashes with separatist rebels in southern Yemen, it has been reported.

A further five people were reported wounded in fighting in Zinjibar after demonstrations against President Ali Abdullah Saleh's government.

Southern separatists say that their region, a separate country before 1990, is being exploited by northern Yemen.

A truce with northern rebels has allowed the government in Sanaa to turn its attention to the secessionists.

The fighting erupted when security forces tried to arrest an arms dealer suspected of supplying the separatists, the news agency Reuters quoted government officials as saying.

The man was named by news agencies as Ali Saleh al-Yafei, a prominent secessionist ******.

Last week around 20 people were arrested in the southern region and charged with rioting, which sparked Sunday's demonstrations across Abyan province.

Southern Yemen is home to most of the country's oil infrastructure.

Analysts say there has been rising tension throughout the south in the past two years, as the southern independence movement gains strength.
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[فقط الأعضاء المسجلين والمفعلين يمكنهم رؤية الوصلات . إضغط هنا للتسجيل]
Yemen raid kills southern activist, family

By AHMED AL-HAJ (AP) – 46 minutes ago

SAN'A, Yemen — A government raid left a southern activist, his wife and three children dead during an ongoing crackdown on southern separatists in Yemen, local officials said Monday.

The officials said Ali Saleh al-Hadi was killed with his family in a pre-dawn raid Monday on their home in Zinjabar town in southern Abyan province.

Two soldiers also died in the raid, the southern officials said but provided no details. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to talk to the media. Government officials in the capital, San'a, did not comment the raid.

South Yemen was once a separate country and simmering tensions there have compounded Yemen's troubles as it struggles with a resurgent al-Qaida movement. Yemen is also the poorest country in the Arab world and home to heavily armed tribes that barely acknowledge the central government's authority.

The unrest in southern Yemen is separate from a six-year conflict in the country's north between government troops and Shiite rebels. That conflict appears to be drawing to a close since the two sides agreed to a cease-fire last month.

Southerners who joined a unified Yemeni 1990 have started a political movement demanding secession from the North, blaming the northerners for marginalizing them.

Also on Monday, demonstrations continued for a third day in several southern provinces, with protesters chanting anti-government slogans and condemning abuses by the government. The southern movement, meanwhile, accused security forces of continuing to raid houses in southern towns and arresting dozens of supporters.

Yemeni police arrested 21 people on Sunday for allegedly belonging to the movement. Brig. Ghazi Mohsin said police also confiscated weapons and separatist literature during raids Saturday in the southern city of Dali, 125 miles (200 kilometers) south of San'a.

Donor countries met in Saudi Arabia on Saturday to decide how best to spend international aid recently pledged to Yemen in the effort to stabilize the violence-torn nation.

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[فقط الأعضاء المسجلين والمفعلين يمكنهم رؤية الوصلات . إضغط هنا للتسجيل]
Thousands rally for south Yemen independence

* Police fire tear gas to disperse demonstrators, 21 ‘rioters’ arrested in Daleh
* Yemeni sappers enter rebel stronghold

SANAA: Thousands of Yemenis took to the streets of three provinces for a second successive day on Sunday to demand the independence of the country’s south, witnesses said.

The protests in Abyan, Daleh and Lahj provinces were conducted in tandem with a two-day international donors’ meeting in neighbouring Saudi Arabia on aiding the Arabian peninsula country.

“Thousands of men and women went out in Lahj province carrying pictures of former vice president Ali Salem al-Bidh and southern flags,” a witness said.

Bidh, who led the south to unity with the north in 1990 but is now a major separatist ******, had called on Friday for “two days of southern anger” to coincide with the donors’ meeting.

Witnesses said the protests on Sunday were peaceful, without any major confrontations with security forces, which are heavily deployed across the south.

But police fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators in the city of Daleh, witnesses said.

Three Abyan civilians suffered bullet wounds on Saturday when police moved to stop protestors cutting the highway between the provincial capital Zinjibar and the south’s main city Aden, witnesses said.

Arrests: General Ghazi Ali Mohsen, head of security in Daleh province, said 21 “rioters” were arrested in Daleh. “The subversive elements were carrying weapons and flags and calling” for the secession of the south from the north, Mohsen said.

Sappers: The Defence Ministry, separately, said on Saturday Yemeni army sappers entered a northern Shia rebel stronghold to clear mines after rebels quit the city of Saada as part of a truce to end a war that has drawn in Saudi Arabia.

Yemen, the poorest Arab country, struck a truce on February 11 with rebels who have been fighting the state since 2004 over religious, economic and social grievances in the mountainous north.

The two-week-old northern truce has largely held, while a conflict with southern separatists has simmered.

The rebels left their Saada stronghold, some 240 km north of the capital Sanaa, on Thursday on condition they were masked, and that they were not followed by security. “After the evacuation, special military engineering teams moved to survey the city and a number of roads and buildings to remove any mines,” the Defence Ministry said in its online newspaper.

The engineers were also removing unexploded ordnance. A number of displaced residents of the city had also begun to return to inspect their houses in Saada, the website said. The conflict in north Yemen has displaced 250,000 people. agencies
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[فقط الأعضاء المسجلين والمفعلين يمكنهم رؤية الوصلات . إضغط هنا للتسجيل]

Protests Sweep Southern Yemen

As donor countries met today in Saudi Arabia to decide how best to spend international aid recently pledged to Yemen, a second day of protests swept the southern half of the country. The protesters are calling for secession from the Yemeni state, and for support from donor countries.

As international donors were meeting in Riyadh this weekend to decide how to spend the nearly $6-billion recently pledged to Yemen for development and counter-terrorism, protesters staged rallies in every province of southern Yemen, according to separatist ******s. The protests are intended to convince donors not to sink international aid into what they call a corrupt and inefficient regime.

Four kinds of flags now appear at southern separatist rallies in Yemen; the flag of the former Democratic Republic of Yemen, an independent state until 1990, and a green flag that symbolizes the call for secession. In the background, some separatists also wave British and American flags, hoping to gather support from the West.

One man, like many separatists, would not give his name for fear of arrest. "Solution is by the help of the free people all over the world. They must help, they have to help to have a very good solution. I think we are as humanitarian, we have to help each other," he said.

He says the Southern Movement's only strategy is peaceful protest.

The Yemeni government says the movement is a threat to national security. Separatists want the government to give up control of its southern territories, which hold most of the country's oil reserves.

During the protests, the Yemeni government says 21 people were arrested and a bomb went off in a market-place. Separatist ******s say 150 people were arrested, and Yemeni security open-fired on protesters, injuring six people. They say three cities have declared a state of emergency, and have no open roads, phone lines, or internet connections.

The government accuses separatists of killing soldiers and officials, setting bombs in residential neighborhoods, and burning civilian businesses owned by northern Yemenis.

Separatists say the government has used the 1990 agreement that unified the country to steal southern resources and jobs. They report random arrests, harassment, violence and killings.

But not everyone in southern Yemen supports the separatist movement. Many say they are sympathetic and believe a lot of the protesters' complaints are legitimate. But they still want Yemen to remain unified, for the sake of stability and peace.

Abdulgheni Abdullah, from the northern city of Taiz, says he has lived in southern Yemen for 19 years. At his toy store in an Aden market he says he loves the people of the south, and will never leave. But unlike many southerners he fully supports a single, unified country. "No north, no south," he says, "It is all Yemen."