AFP
An army tank shelled a funeral tent erected by the Southern Movement at a school in Yemen yesterday, killing 13 people, including children, a medic and witnesses said.
Tensions have run high in recent days in the formerly independent south, home to an increasingly assertive secessionist movement, raising fears that Al Qaeda’s powerful Yemen affiliate could exploit the growing unrest in the Arab world’s poorest country.
A long-running dispute over whether and how to grant the south limited autonomy has hindered the political transition following the 33-year rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who stepped down last year following Arab Spring-inspired protests.
“Thirteen people have died, among them three children” in yesterday’s attack, a medic from Al-Nasr hospital in the southern Daleh province said. Medics at other hospitals said more than 20 people were wounded, some critically.
Witnesses said an army tank had shelled the tent in Sanah, 300km south of the capital, with one saying that troops had kept firing “when we tried to hospitalise the casualties”, adding that “there are wounded victims still inside the tent.”
Witnesses later said the wounded were finally evacuated.
The Southern Movement—which is campaigning for autonomy or outright secession for the formerly independent south—had set up the tent for mourners paying condolences following the killing of a man during clashes with security forces on Monday.
The clashes in Daleh erupted when secessionists attempted to storm the governorate building to hoist the flag of the former South Yemen. The fighting left two Yemeni policemen and a civilian dead.
State news agency Saba quoted a top security official as saying that President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has formed a committee to investigate yesterday’s attack.
Violence has intensified in south Yemen amid anger over the killing of local tribal chief Said Ben Habrish and his bodyguards at an army checkpoint earlier this month after they refused to hand over their weapons. Two soldiers were also killed in the exchange.
On Thursday, gunmen killed four soldiers and wounded several others in an attack on an army checkpoint in the southeast Hadramout province, an Al Qaeda stronghold.
A security official said a cousin of South Yemen’s exiled president Ali Salem al-Baid was among the militants who assaulted the checkpoint, accusing the Southern Movement and the Hadramout tribal alliance of being behind the attack.
Baid leads a hardline faction of the Southern Movement that, alongside the tribal alliance, has launched protests over the death of Ben Habrish.
But a leader of the tribal alliance denied any involvement in the checkpoint attack.
The violence has sparked warnings by Yemeni officials that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, blamed for most of the increasingly common hit-and-run strikes on military personnel and officials, could exploit the growing unrest in the south.