Yemen militants capture coastal city

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/29/yemen-saleh-militants-zanjibar-occup\

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Yemen militants capture coastal city

President Saleh accused of letting Zanjibar fall into Islamist hands after his

claim that al-Qaida would thrive without him

Tom Finn in Sana'a guardian.co.uk, Sunday 29 May 2011 18.47 BST Article history

A key coastal city deserted by Yemeni security forces is now under full control

of Islamist militants, according to residents and security officials, as a tense

ceasefire prevails in the capital between a powerful rebel tribe and the

president's troops.

Critics accused President Ali Abdullah Saleh of allowing militants to seize

Zinjibar to distract from four months of protests calling for an end to his

33-year rule. Saleh has warned that without him, al-Qaida would thrive in Yemen.

After a fleeting clash with security forces, Zanjibar, a strategic city of

20,000 people in the largely ungoverned province of Abyan, was abandoned to a

militia of about 200 men who had arrived the previous morning firing

Kalashnikovs from the back of pick-up trucks, according to resident Mahmoud

al-Sarbi.

" Zanjibar is like a ghost town, apart from gunmen roaming the streets and a few

residents still barricaded in their homes. It's empty, " he said from the nearby

port of Aden after fleeing with his family.

He said the militants had not identified themselves as al-Qaida, but he

suspected them of having " Islamist ties " after they crowbarred open the city's

jail and occupied its mosques.

The secession of Zanjibar followed a week of bloody street battles in central

Sana'a, with fighters from Yemen's most powerful tribe exchanging machine-gun

fire and mortars with Saleh's security forces. More than 120 people were killed.

A spokesman for the Hashid tribe, Abdulqawi al-Qaisi, said it was handing back

government buildings it had occupied. " However, this does not mean that a

ceasefire has been signed, " he added. It meant the tribe was " co-operating for a

ceasefire to succeed " .

Residents who had fled to their villages fearing civil war filtered back as an

eerie quiet hung over the capital, punctuated by machine-gun and mortar fire.

In the face of rising international pressure, Saleh has not shied away from

warning that al-Qaida would benefit from the fall of his regime. But Yemen's

opposition though have dismissed Saleh's warnings as fear-mongering. In a

statement, the Common Forum parliamentary opposition coalition accused Saleh of

having " delivered Zinjibar to groups that he has formed and armed, to continue

to utilise the spectre of al-Qaida to frighten regional and international

parties " .

It denounced " the criminal plotting of Ali Abdullah Saleh " and reiterated its

call for " the immediate departure " of the president.

Nearly 300 Yemenis have been killed in the protests, born out of the Arab spring

movement that led to the downfall of the long-standing rulers of Tunisia and

Egypt.

Economic hardship was part of the impetus that drove tens of thousands to take

to the streets — about 40% of Yemen's 23 million people live on less than $2 a

day and one third face chronic hunger.