"The Yemeni president has arrived
along with officials and citizens who had received different injuries
for treatment in Saudi Arabia," the royal court said.
According to the statement, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, responding to a request by the Yemeni government, sent a specialized medical team to Sanaa on Saturday to conduct medical tests on Saleh and other officials and citizens who have suffered injuries as a result of different events that took place recently.
Saleh, his prime minister, two deputy prime ministers and the speakers of both parliamentary chambers, were injured when a rocket slammed into a mosque inside his presidential compound on Friday. Eleven guards died in the attack.
The medical team recommended that the president and his officials be taken to Saudi Arabia to complete their treatment, the statement said.
Saleh arrived at King Khalid Air Base in Riyadh Saturday midnight and was transferred to a military hospital, according to media reports.
Saleh, whose Saudi medical evacuation plane was met by a senior Saudi official, walked off the aircraft but had visible injuries on his neck, head and face, a source told Reuters.
The extent of Saleh’s injuries has been a matter of intense speculation, with Yemen's Deputy Information Minister Abdu Al-Janadi saying the embattled president was in good condition and "there is no reason to transfer him outside the country.”
He told Al-Jazeera that bandages on Saleh’s head for burns and scrapes prevented him from appearing on television as government officials had promised Friday night after the attack.
Sheik Mohammed Nagi Al-Shayef, a leader of the Saleh-allied Bakeel tribe, said he met with the president Saturday evening at the Defense Ministry compound in the capital.
“He suffered burns but they were not serious. He was burned on both hands, his face and head,” Al-Shayef told The Associated Press. He said Saleh also was hit by jagged pieces of wood that splintered from the mosque pulpit. There were about 200 people in the mosque when the rocket landed.
But sources close to Saleh were quoted by the BBC as saying the attack had left the president with a 7.6-cm long piece of shrapnel under his heart and second-degree burns to his chest and face.
Hours after the attack, Saleh delivered an audio address, his voice labored, but the images shown on Yemeni television Friday after the attack were old.
A secretary in Saleh’s office and a ruling party official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters, said Saleh spoke to the King Abdullah afterward.
For months, Saleh has defied intense international pressure, including from longtime ally Washington and its Gulf neighbors, to step down. On several occasions he has agreed to leave power, only to step back at the last moment.
Global powers have been pressing Saleh to sign a Gulf-brokered deal to end his rule. Leaving Yemen, even for medical care, would make it hard for Saleh to retain power and could be seen as the first step in a transfer of leadership.
He has exasperated his former US and Saudi allies, who once saw him as a key partner in efforts to combat Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), by repeatedly reneging on a deal brokered by Gulf states for him to quit in return for immunity from prosecution.
Worries are mounting that Yemen, already on the brink of financial ruin and home to Al-Qaeda militants, could become a failed state that poses a threat to the world’s top oil exporting region and to global security.
Abdulla Ali Al-Radhi, Yemen’s ambassador to Britain, said of Friday’s attack on the palace “The rocket was devastating. It was a clear assassination attempt against the president.”
A growing number of people in Saleh’s inner circle feel the attack may have carried out by General Ali Mohsen who has broken from Saleh, sided with anti-government protesters and called the president a “madman who is thirsty for more bloodshed.”
An expert on Yemen with close ties to Sanaa’s leadership said: “Nobody could have done this with such military precision other than a military man.”
Saleh’s forces retaliated over the attack by shelling the homes of the leaders of the Hashed tribal federation, which has been engaged in street fights with his forces. Spokesmen for the group denied responsibility for the palace attack and said 10 tribesmen were killed and dozens injured by the shelling.
Through the pre-dawn hours Saturday, government and opposition forces exchanged rocket fire, damaging a contested police station. The rockets rained down on streets housing government buildings that had been taken over by tribesmen.
Since violence erupted in the city on May 23, residents have been hiding in basements as the two sides fight for control of government ministries and hammer one another in artillery duels and gunbattles, rattling neighborhoods and sending smoke billowing into the air above Sanaa.
A day after the deadly attack, however, King Abdullah intervened to tamp down what has become an all-out military conflict on the Kingdom's southern border. The capital and other areas of Yemen grew quiet for the first time in days after dawn Saturday.
A Saudi official confirmed that King Abdullah had brokered a fresh truce Yemeni government officials and opposition tribal leaders reported that Saudi Arabia, which shares a border with Yemen, mediated a cease-fire.
between a powerful Yemeni tribal federation and forces loyal to Saleh, and a tribal leader said his followers were abiding by it.
Abdullah intervened to tamp down what has become an all-out military conflict on his southern border. The capital and other areas of Yemen grew quiet for the first time in days after dawn Saturday.
The cease-fire appeared to be holding on Saturday night and the streets of Sanaa were quiet.
A Saudi-brokered truce agreed a week ago held for only a day before fresh street battles broke out in the capital Sanaa, leading to the most intense fighting there in the four-month-old uprising against Saleh’s rule.
But an early signal that cease-fire might be in the works, arose Saturday afternoon when, in the southern city of Taiz when the Republican Guard brigade that had occupied the streets of the southern city quietly left town and returned to base.
Taiz had been a focal point of anti-Saleh activism since the uprising began. The Republican Guard left Saturday without giving a reason after having violently cleared protest camps there last week.
An official from the Republican Guard’s 33rd brigade said gunmen clashed with the brigade overnight, destroying three of their vehicles. Meanwhile, officers and prominent city residents pressured Brig. Gen. Jibrah Al-Hashidi to stop opposing the protesters, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under military rules.
The brigade issued no official statement as other military groups have done when defecting to the opposition. But its returning to base is significant because it lead a fierce crackdown on protesters earlier this week that killed at least 25 people, sparking international condemnation.
In Washington, the White House called on all sides to stop the fighting, which has killed more than 160 people.
“Violence cannot resolve the issues that confront Yemen, and today’s events cannot be a justification for a new round of fighting,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.
President Barack Obama’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, discussed the crisis in Yemen with officials in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates during a three-day visit to the Gulf that ended Friday. He vowed to work with Yemen’s powerful neighbors to stop the violence.
Washington fears the chaos will undermine the Yemen government’s US-backed campaign against Al-Qaeda’s branch in the country, which has attempted a number of attacks against the United States. Saleh has been a crucial US ally in the anti-terror fight, but Washington is now trying to negotiate a stable exit for him.
Germany said Saturday it had ordered the immediate closure of its embassy in Yemen “because of current developments.” “The embassy team that is still on the ground will leave the country as soon as it is possible and safe,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, protesters have been trying unsuccessfully since February to oust Saleh with a wave of peaceful protests that have brought out hundreds of thousands daily in Sanaa and other cities.
Now the crisis has transformed into a power struggle between two of Yemen’s most powerful families — Saleh’s, which dominates the security forces, and the Al-Ahmar clan, which leads Yemen’s strongest tribal confederation, known as the Hashid. The confederation is grouped around 10 tribes across the north.
Al-Ahmar announced the Hashid’s support for the protest movement in March, and his fighters adhered to the movement’s nonviolence policy. But last week, Saleh’s forces moved against Al-Ahmar’s fortress-like residence in Sanaa, and the tribe’s fighters rose up in fury.
