Agencies/Sanaa
A car bombing yesterday killed a leading member of Yemen’s powerful Sunni Al Islah party whose supporters have been battling Shia militias, a security official said.
Al Islah assistant secretary general Sadeq Mansur died “immediately” when a device inside the door of his car exploded in the country’s third city Taez southwest of Sanaa, the official said.
Police are trying to identify the attackers, the official added.
Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Al Islah have been resisting an advance by Shia Houthi militiamen who easily overran the capital on September 21 and who have since been expanding farther south.
Early this month, the Houthis attacked Al Islah headquarters in the southwestern city of Ibb, killing three people.
Dozens of people have also been killed in fighting between armed Shias and Sunnis in central Yemen.
The Shia militias did not enter mainly Sunni Taez, 250km from Sanaa, after a deal was struck between the provincial authorities and the Houthis’ representatives to avoid fighting there.
Mansur’s murder comes just over two weeks after another politician, the liberal Union of Popular Forces secretary general Mohamed Abdulmalik al-Mutawakil, was gunned down in Sanaa.
l One of Yemen’s most prominent human rights activists, Arwa Othman, yesterday joined the country’s new unity government as culture minister, state news agency Saba reported.
Othman was sworn in after returning from an overseas trip during which she received an award from Human Rights Watch for her activism, including efforts to end child marriages and promote women’s rights.
The group said she played a key role in ensuring that Yemen’s recent transitional National Dialogue Conference agreed proposals enshrining gender equality in law, prohibiting discrimination, and setting the minimum age for marriage at 18.
Othman, along with other prominent female activists, has come under pressure from Islamist forces, with Human Rights Watch noting that “they have been the subjects of an increasingly aggressive apostasy campaign”.
A leading activist during the 2011 revolution that brought down long-time ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh, the new minister has also been an advocate for marginalised groups, including Yemenis of African origin and the country’s tiny remaining Jewish community.
Bystanders look on at the scene of the blast in Taez yesterday.
