Suicide Bomber Kills Yemen Pro-army Militia Chief
A suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber blew himself up early Sunday in southern Yemen killing the commander of a local pro-army militia and wounding six people, a government official told Agence France Presse.
Two children were among the wounded in the town of Mudiya in the restive southern province of Abyan, the official said.
"An Al-Qaida suicide bomber managed to enter a home used as a base by the Popular Resistance Committees and activated an explosives belt killing the local commander Nasser Ali Mansur and wounding six," he said.
The committees have recently become a target for al-Qaida militants who were forced to flee Abyan in June following battles led by the army, with the local militiamen backing them up.
A doctor in Aden told AFP he had helped evacuate three of the wounded from a hospital in the Abyan city of Loden to a bigger facility in Aden "because they are in critical condition."
The attack came hours after suspected al-Qaida militants killed 19 soldiers in a rocket attack and suicide bombing on Saturday that targeted intelligence headquarters in Aden, the main southern city in Yemen.
Also Sunday, an official told AFP that Yemeni authorities have freed a leading southern separatist days after he was arrested on his arrival in Aden after spending several years in self-imposed exile.
Former ambassador Ahmed al-Hassani, who has lived in Britain since 2006 as a political refugee, was arrested at dawn on Wednesday at the airport after arriving on-board a flight from Beirut.
Hassani was freed overnight Saturday on the express orders of President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, the official said.
Hassani is the secretary general of the Southern Democratic Assembly.
Source: Agence France Presse
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