Yemen’s Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), a coalition of political opposition groups, today warned that Yemen was slipping ever closer to a civil war tonight following the attempted assassination of Mohammed al-Yadumi, the leader of the nation’s primary opposition party the IIP.
The JMP statement said Yadumi’s car was fired on in the capital city, and accused members of the National Security Agency and Special Forces of being behind the attack. Yemen’s Interior Ministry inexplicably blamed the attack on the Houthi rebels, another opposition group in the increasingly splintered nation.
And indeed, violence in and around the capital seems to be on the rise today, with troops attacking and killing at least five “opposition-backed armed tribesmen” near a military base. Tribesmen have been fighting with regime forces in the capital for months, since the attempted arrest of a top tribal leader for opposing President Saleh’s continued rule.
This, of course, is entirely separate from the massive fight going on in the nation’s southeast, where once again troops claimed to have killed “several” members of the Islamist faction which currently controls much of the Abyan Province. They claimed two top members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were slain in the attacks.
