Missile Attack Kills 10 at South Yemen Separatist Parade

Six soldiers, four children slain, STC blames Houthis

A military parade for new recruits into the southern Yemeni separatist Southern Transitional Council in Dhale Province was hit today with a ballistic missile. Six soldiers and four children were killed in the attack.

STC officials were quick to blame northern Yemen’s Shi’ite Houthi movement for the attack.  The Houthis have not issued any statements on the matter so far, though they have been active intermittently in Dhale Province.

While it wouldn’t be unheard of for the Houthis to fire a missile into Dhale, it would be weird for them to target the STC, as generally speaking they focus on fighting the Saudi-backed government.

Nominally, the STC is aligned with the government, but in practice the two sides have been near constantly fighting for months, and those fights have kept both from serious moves against the Houthis. It seems unlikely that they would want to weaken the STC just now, unless this is the prelude to a major push somewhere in the area.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.