ADEN/WASHINGTON: Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh was so severely injured in an assassination attempt that it is uncertain when he will return to the country, Yemen Vice President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has said.

Saleh was injured in an attack on his palace in early June and is receiving medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. Yemen has been shaken by months of protests against his three-decade rule.

In fresh fighting overnight in southern Yemen, militants linked with Al-Qaeda killed five Yemeni soldiers trying to retake control of a vital football stadium seized by the insurgents on Wednesday, a local official said.

Hadi told CNN in an interview that he saw Saleh immediately after the bomb attack and the Yemeni leader had a piece of wood between his ribs in his chest and burns to his face, arms and upper body.

Hadi said according to the doctors no one can tell when Saleh might return.

“Days, weeks, months,” he told CNN through a translator. “It could be months, this is a decision up to the doctors.”

In a message sent through his foreign minister on state television on Wednesday, Saleh called for dialogue with the opposition to implement a Gulf-brokered plan for a transfer of power.

“We discussed the Gulf initiative, and (Saleh) called for the opening of a dialogue with the opposition...in order to agree on a vehicle by which to implement the Gulf initiative,” Yemen’s Foreign Minister Abubakr Al-Qirbi said.

Al-Qirbi said he had visited Saleh in hospital and that his health and that of other high ranking officials who were injured in the attack was “good and in continuous improvement.” Yemeni officials had said Saleh would make his first public appearance since the palace attack this week but Saleh’s media secretary Ahmed Al-Sufi told Reuters the president’s plan to record a video message to be broadcast on state television had been delayed on the advice of his doctors.

A local Yemeni official said on Thursday that one militant was also killed in the fighting around the stadium, which the insurgents seized on Wednesday in heavy fighting that killed at least 26 government soldiers. At least 18 insurgents also died.

Militants also pressed against a military base housing the 25 Mechanized Division, deployed to fight the militants in Zinjibar, raising fears the militants may next target Aden, Yemen’s second largest city and home of the country’s main oil refinery.