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February 17 2012
Sanaa - Yemeni government forces detained 10 al-Qaeda-linked fighters on
Friday, a security source said, after an attack in a town which underscored the
security challenges of next week's presidential elections.
On Wednesday, Islamist militants shot dead a military officer and an
election official in the town of Baydah, about 130km southeast of the capital
Sanaa.
The militants opened fire on a car carrying Khaled Waqaa, the leader of
a brigade of the elite Republican Guard, killing him as well as the head of
Baydah's election committee, Hussein al-Babli, his son and two soldiers. Ten
people were wounded.
Yemenis vote on February 21 to pick a leader to replace President Ali
Abdullah Saleh, now in the United States for medical treatment, amid concern
that violence could reduce turnout.
Militant group Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility for Wednesday's
attack but said it had targeted only the military commander in revenge for the
government's failure to fulfil its half of a deal under which Islamists quit a
town they had seized.
Militants agreed last month to pull out of Radda, about 170km south-east
of Sanaa, in exchange for the formation of a council to govern it under Islamic
law and the release of several jailed comrades.
The militants' spokesman said that instead of setting up such a council,
Republican Guard forces had entered the town. He warned the assassination was
just a preliminary response.
Saleh formally handed power to his deputy, Vice President Abd-Rabbu
Mansour Hadi in November as part of a Gulf-brokered plan to end months of
anti-government protests that paralysed the impoverished state for most of 2011.
Weakened by the upheaval, Yemen's government has lost control of swathes
of the country, giving al Qaeda's regional Yemen-based wing room to expand its
foothold near oil shipping routes through the Red Sea. - Reuters
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