SANAA, 15 September 2006 — In a second stampede yesterday, six people were crushed to death and more than 20 others were injured in southern Yemen during a pre-election rally in support of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The stampede happened in the city of Zunjubar, which is the provincial capital of the Abyan province and is located around 450 km south of the capital Sanaa.
According to sources, two of the dead were run over by President Saleh’s motorcade vehicles near the stadium where the rally was being held. However, government officials denied the reports and said the two people were killed in a traffic accident that took place outside Zunjubar.
This is the second deadly stampede to take place within days in Yemen. On Tuesday, at least 51 people died at another election rally supporting Saleh that was held at a stadium in the Ibb province.
Saleh is running for re-election for a new seven-year term in elections that are scheduled to be held on Sept. 20. The 64-year-old Yemeni leader has been at the helm since 1978, ruling North Yemen for 12 years, and then taking over the presidency of the unified country after the merger of North and South Yemen in 1990.
Meanwhile, a top leader of the 1994 failed secessionist rebellion in Yemen returned home from Jeddah on Wednesday after 12 years of self-imposed exile following a ten-week civil war. Abdul Rahman Al-Jifri flew to the southern port city of Aden along with 11 exiled dissidents.
Shortly after arrival, Al-Jifri told reporters that he would actively participate in the political process of Yemen. “The situation in Yemen now requires a united action to develop the democratization process with the presidential election being the most important part of it,” he said.
Government officials told Arab News that Al-Jifri, who fled the country in 1994 after a failed bid by South Yemen to secede from the north, would resume his political activity and that he would back President Saleh in his bid for re-election.
Al-Jifri served as vice president of the Democratic Republic of Yemen, which was declared in May 1994 by breakaway politicians in the southern part of Yemen only four years after the reunification of the north and south.
In another development, complex talks between kidnappers and Yemeni authorities to secure the release of four French tourists taken hostage in lawless Shabwa province of southeast Yemen remained deadlocked yesterday.
“The kidnappers and their tribe have informed the new mediators that they are still waiting for a positive response from local authorities” for an exchange, a tribal source close to the kidnappers said.
