SANAA, 30 June 2004 — Yemeni troops yesterday killed the deputy commander of militants holed up in a mountain redoubt near the northern town of Saada, the Defense Ministry said, as three soldiers were killed and 13 wounded in continued clashes.

The ministry’s website named the dead man as Zaid ibn Ali Moslah Al-Houthi, brother of the besieged anti-US scholar Hussein Badruddin Al-Houthi, whose followers have been engaged in bloody clashes with the army since June 18.

The weekly, September 26, said on its website that Zaid Al-Houthi was deputy commander of “The Believing Youth”. The man was killed in a raid on a house belonging to the religious leader in Maran, the ministry said in a statement.

Although the statement said that the government forces succeeded in inflicting losses on followers of Al-Houthi, details on casualties were not available. “The armed forces also succeeded in inflicting more losses in the ranks of (his) followers,” the ministry said.

“Several of Al-Houthi’s followers have been arrested and large quantities of arms, ammunition and cars seized, along with documents of a subversive nature which were clearly calculated to fan sectarian strife”.

The fighting continued yesterday in several areas around Al-Houthi’s stronghold, where “a senior officer was seriously wounded,” according to a tribal official. “The officer was hit with eight bullets in the Hidan region,” to the east of Maran, he added.

Three soldiers were killed Monday evening when suspected supporters of Hussein Badruddin Al-Houthi attacked a military site near Saada, about 250 km north of the capital Sanaa, local sources said. They said 13 other soldiers were wounded in the attack.

Al-Houthi and hundreds of his supporters have been besieged in Maran in Saada province, near the border with Saudi Arabia, for the last nine days.

A website run by the Islamic-oriented opposition party (Islah) said five of Al-Houthi’s supporters were killed last night when military gunships fired missiles on a local marketplace in the Maran area.

Heavy fighting that broke out on June 18 in the region has left 70 dead, including 12 soldiers. Sixty-eight followers of the cleric have been reported arrested.

Sources close to Al-Houthi have put the death toll from the clashes at about 200.

Mediation efforts to end the fighting and secure Al-Houthi’s surrender reached a deadlock when the preacher refused to negotiate. The army, backed up by security forces, was deployed on Monday evening with new reinforcements in Saada province where the situation is very tense.

“Military operations will continue until we take the last hideout of Hussein Al-Houthi and his supporters and put an end to the rebellion,” an army officer said.

Yemeni authorities accuse Al-Houthi of organizing protests against the United States and Israel in mosques in Saada and the capital Sanaa.

Al-Houthi is also accused of receiving foreign financial aid aiming at disturbing the country’s security and stability, according to an Interior Ministry statement last week.

But one of the MPs involved in the abortive mediation effort accused elements of the army of undermining efforts to resolve the crisis peacefully.

In its weekly meeting yesterday, the Cabinet listened to a report by the Interior Ministry about the ongoing manhunt and hailed the measures taken to deal with those elements who disturb the security and violate law and constitution, according to the SABA news agency.

The council also instructed the government forces to strictly deal with those elements and quickly crush the strife which is an act of terrorism, the agency reported.

One security official said Monday that the operation was expected to be brought to an end soon, with government forces tightening their grip on the preacher’s whereabouts.

Meanwhile, the Yemeni government said yesterday it would reform the country’s education system and shut down unlicensed schools to combat extremism.

“Due to links between extremism and militancy and some curricula that promote deviant and alien ideologies ... the Cabinet ordered the immediate closure of all schools and centers violating the education law,” a Cabinet statement said.

“The Cabinet also stressed the need for a complete overhaul of religious education curricula to realize moderation in Islam and national unity and to increase security and stability,” said the statement.

There are hundreds of religious schools in Yemen, many of them unlicensed. Some analysts say these institutions promote extremism.

The Cabinet also banned private and national schools from providing unlicensed courses outside the official curriculum.

Yemen has been battling militants since the September 2001 attacks on the United States focused attention on extremists in the country of 19 million at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

Trying to shed its image as a safe haven for militants, it has rounded up hundreds of them and launched a campaign to persuade Al-Qaeda supporters to abandon violence.

The last major attack in the country was the 2002 bomb attack on the French supertanker Limburg, which took place two years after 17 American sailors were killed in a suicide attack on the US destroyer Cole.

— Additional input from agencies