SANAA: Seventeen rebels and eight Yemeni soldiers were killed in fierce fighting in the north of the country, a military source told AFP on Monday.
“There was fierce fighting in the (northern) city of Saada on Sunday. Seventeen Houthis (rebels) and eight Yemeni soldiers were killed,” the source said.
The rebels said in a statement posted Monday on their website that clashes were still under way in Saada where they alleged the army was using bulldozers to “destroy” property.
A report on a website of the Yemeni Defense Ministry, www.26sep.net, said that Yemeni forces had seized control of rebel hide-outs in Saada’s Old City — a stronghold of the rebels. “Men of the armed forces were able to gain control of a number of hide-outs in which partisans of terrorism and sabotage were barricaded,” Monday’s report said.
It described the fighting as being part of “the final stage of the operation of clearing the remaining terrorist sleeper cells from the city.”
Fighting between the Yemeni government and the rebels has continued sporadically since 2004. The latest round broke out Aug. 11, when government forces launched an all-out assault against the rebels. US President Barack Obama, meanwhile, says he has “no intention” of sending troops to fight militants in Yemen and Somalia, despite growing concern over the presence of militant cells there.
Obama made a fresh push for international cooperation to confront militants in Yemen, where the top US military officer, Adm. Michael Mullen, said sending troops was “not a possibility.”
“I never rule out any possibility in a world that is this complex ... in countries like Yemen, in countries like Somalia, I think working with international partners is most effective at this point,” Obama said in a People magazine interview to be published Friday. The magazine released a transcript Sunday.
“I have no intention of sending US boots on the ground in these regions.” He insisted the lawless tribal belt straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border “remains the epicenter of Al-Qaeda,” but acknowledged a Yemen-based affiliate of Osama Bin Laden’s network has become “a more serious problem.”
Nevertheless, an influential Yemeni preacher warned the government on Monday against allowing “foreign occupation” of the country in the growing cooperation with the US against Al-Qaeda.
Speaking at a news conference here, Abdul-Majid Al-Zindani, who once associated with Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, said: “We accept any cooperation in the framework of respect and joint interests, and we reject military occupation of our country. And we don’t accept the return of colonization.”
“Yemen’s rulers and people must be careful before a (foreign) guardianship is imposed on them,” he said. “The day Parliament allows the occupation of Yemen, the people will rise up against it and bring it down.”
