A fighter of the Popular Resistance Committees prepares a mortar cannon during clashes with Houthis near Yemen’s northern city of Marib yesterday.
AFP
Sanaa
Yemen’s Shia Houthi rebels have killed the capital’s governor in clashes that erupted during an attempt to detain him, his relatives said yesterday.
Sanaa governor Abdulghani Jamil and his nephew Nasr Jamil died of wounds suffered in clashes late Thursday between his aides and the Iran-backed militiamen, they said.
Jamil was appointed by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled to Saudi Arabia after the rebels seized power in Sanaa and later advanced on his last refuge in the south, the port city of Aden.
The Houthis “demanded Jamil hand himself in” but he refused, resulting in a firefight, relatives said.
The Houthis, allied with renegade troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have been in control of Sanaa since September, despite more than two months of Saudi-led coalition air strikes against their positions across the country.
Coalition warplanes yesterday hit rebel positions in the eastern oil-rich Marib province, killing three local Houthi leaders, an official in the region said.
UN special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed flew in to Sanaa yesterday for talks with political parties, a rebel-run website reported.
“All Yemeni parties must return to dialogue,” he said, quoted by sabanews.net upon his arrival at Sanaa airport.
A United Nations conference due to take place in Geneva on Thursday was postponed, in a fresh blow to UN efforts to broker peace in a country where nearly 2,000 people have been killed since March.
