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| A member of the Yemeni military holds up a placard during a protest demanding the restructuring of military and security units in Sanaa |
Thousands of people demonstrated across Yemen yesterday to demand that new President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi restructure the army, in the first such rally since he took office less than a week ago.
“The people want the army restructured,” they chanted in northern Sanaa. “The people want a new Yemen.”
Similar protests took place in 17 other provinces, including Yemen’s second-largest city Taez, witnesses said.
Yemenis have gathered every Friday for the past year to demand the ouster of former president Saleh who formally handed over power to Hadi on Monday, under a Gulf-brokered transition plan.
The power transfer deal stipulates that during a two-year interim period, Hadi will oversee a restructuring of the army.
Yesterday, state news agency Saba said Hadi has named General Salem Ali Qatan to head the 31st Armoured Brigade in south Yemen, a post which General Mahdi Maqola, known for his close ties to Saleh and accused of corruption, had held for decades.
Hadi also appointed a new governor and new intelligence chief for the main southern city of Aden, a separatists’ stronghold.
Anti-corruption strikes have spread across several military and government departments in the impoverished Arab country over the past two months.
Saleh had appointed relatives to head the country’s military and security apparatus.
Air force soldiers have been staging protests calling for the ouster of their commander General Mohamed Saleh al-Ahmar, a half-brother of Saleh.
Saleh’s son commands the elite Republican Guard troops while his nephew Yehya heads the central security services and Tariq, another nephew, controls the presidential guard.
Meanwhile, Yemen’s newly-elected President Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi has sacked Mahdi Maqula - a key loyalist of former president Saleh - from his post as chief of the country’s southern military zone, local media reported yesterday.
Hadi, who was inaugurated this week, ordered that Maqula be replaced by Salem Ali, a prominent army general from southern Yemen, the government-run Al Gomhoriah newspaper reported.
Maqula’s opponents accuse him of corruption and sidelining qualified army officers, mainly those belonging to the south.
The move came amid increasing public pressure on Hadi to remove loyalists and relatives of Saleh from key posts in the country’s military and security agencies.
Meanwhile, a rebel group that controls much of the north of the country said that a bomb blast hit an anti-US protest in northern Yemen yesterday, injuring at least 22 people,.
In a statement, the leader of the Houthi movement - Shia rebels that Yemen’s military tried to crush in campaigns in 2004-2009 - said the bombing took place in the province of Saada, on Yemen’s northwestern border with Saudi Arabia.
It did not say who it believed carried out the attack.
The region has seen bouts of fighting in recent months between the Houthis and Sunni Muslims. The Houthis have accused Riyadh of arming their foes.
The conflict with the Houthis is one of several facing Yemen’s new president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, as he tries to implement a power transfer backed by Riyadh and Washington.
Al Qaeda’s active Arabian Peninsula branch is based in Yemen, and claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in southern Yemen that killed at least 26 people last Saturday
The transition plan is aimed at averting civil war among an army divided between foes and allies of former president Saleh.