Yemeni tribesmen free three Filipino sailors

SANAA, Wed Apr 4, 2012

(Reuters) - Yemeni tribal militants freed three Filipino sailors they kidnapped last month in the central province of Maarib, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.

The ministry gave no further details about the release, but it had said last month that the tribesmen held the sailors to press the government into releasing a tribesman held by the authorities.

In a separate incident, an Oil Ministry official said Islamist militants fired at a team of engineers as they attempted to fix an oil pipeline that the militants blew up on Monday. One person was injured in the attack.

Just over a month after former President Ali Abdullah Saleh quit office under a power-transfer deal, security in much of the country is shaky, with Islamists militants in the south controlling swathes of territory, and the military - which split after mass protests against Saleh last year - remains divided.

The Yemeni capital itself is split between rival forces, including those controlled by renegade general Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar and the Republican Guard, commanded by Saleh's son Ahmed, and saw bouts of open warfare in May and September.

A military committee tasked with restructuring the armed forces is to ensure feuding factions evacuate the streets of Sanaa and remove checkpoints, but there has been little progress toward that goal.