The fate of Saleh, forced to seek treatment in Saudi Arabia for injuries suffered in a bomb attack in his palace in June, has thrown the Arab world’s poorest country into a political crisis threatening to tip into civil war.
Political deadlock born of six months of protests against Saleh and renewed conflicts with Islamists and separatists have raised fears in neighboring Saudi Arabia and Washington that chaos in Yemen could embolden the country’s Al Qaeda wing.
Saleh will leave hospital in the coming days, a Yemeni government source told Reuters. But the wounded leader, who has vowed to return to Yemen, will stay on in Riyadh in Saudi government housing for the time being, the source said.
His prime minister, Ali Mohamed Megawar, injured in the same attack, left hospital and moved into official Saudi accommodation earlier on Saturday, the source said.
The announcement came as forces loyal to Saleh skirmished with those of the Ahmar family, a power within Yemen’s Hashed tribal confederation, in the capital, witnesses said.
They said the two sides traded fire in the Hassaba district of the capital, where prominent members of the Ahmar family reside. The exchange marked a second day of confrontation in the area, though there were no reports of casualties.
Separately, one protester was wounded and three injured in the southern city of Taiz when forces loyal to Saleh opened fire to scatter an anti-Saleh demonstration, witnesses said.
Weeks of fighting between Saleh’s forces and those of the Ahmar family left parts of Sanaa in ruins, giving way to an uneasy cease-fire after the bombing in Saleh’s compound that forced him from the country in June.
That attack came after Saleh rejected for the third time a deal crafted by the Gulf Cooperation Council, a grouping of Yemen’s resource-rich Gulf neighbors, to ease him from office.
The collapse of diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis over Saleh’s fate has coincided with a surge of fighting in the south of the country with Islamists, whom Saleh’s government has linked to the country’s Al Qaeda branch.
Islamist fighters seized Zinjibar, capital of the southern Abyan province, in late May, a development Saleh’s opponents accused him of orchestrating to underline his threat that only his rule would keep parts of the country from falling to Al Qaeda.
The ensuing fighting in Abyan has displaced as many as 90,000 of the province’s residents.
Washington, which has made Saleh’s Yemen a cornerstone of its counter-terrorism strategy, has urged him to accept the deal to ease him from power, while maintaining ties with potential successors.
