Agencies
ADEN, APRIL 17
The capture of much of eastern Yemen's oil-producing province by a newly-formed group of armed tribesmen and Sunni Muslim clerics has alarmed local officials, who say they fear the situation will be exploited by al Qaeda to expand.The Arabian peninsula's poorest country is now divided between a Saudi-backed exiled government and Iran-backed Shi'ite fighters who control the capital.
The country is also home to one of the most lethal branches of al Qaeda, sheltering in tribal regions and targeted for years by U.S. drone strikes.
In recent days, troops appear to have abandoned much of the eastern province of Hadramawt, leaving it under control of a new group calling itself the Council of Sunni Scholars. The Council's armed tribesmen took charge of an airport and an oil facility in the province's seaside capital Mukalla on Thursday.
"The Council has designated local youth from the area to set up checkpoints near the area of the oil fields and export terminal and near the Al-Rayyan airport," said a local official. "The security situation there and in Mukalla is now under control and calm."
Local politicians say the Council, now effectively the de facto ruling authority in the province, is separate from al Qaeda but includes some figures associated with al Qaeda in the past.
It negotiated with al Qaeda gunmen who appeared on the streets of Mukalla two weeks ago, and since then appears to have reached some kind of accommodation with them, although the nature of that relationship appears ambiguous.
An official in the province told Reuters: "A local committee (of tribesmen) was formed to administer Hadramawt, and this committee benefits al Qaeda."
Nasser Ba Quzquz, a left-wing politician in the provincial capital, said a new feeling of local solidarity should not extend to al Qaeda.
"Yes, these people are sons of Hadramawt, but they belong to a terrorist organization. They kill people from Hadramawt, they rob banks and sow terror and fear."
HIT LIST
Residents of Mukalla and other towns say al Qaeda fighters have become brazen in recent weeks, openly recruiting at rallies. During one gathering, a singer of jihadi songs named top political and security officers on a hit list.
The fighters' boldness may be one reason army units were so quick to abandon the province.
"Military units along the Hadramawt coast handed over their bases to tribesmen and returned to their home provinces out of fear that they would be attacked by al Qaeda," said a local army official.
Al Qaeda fighters in the area are drawn mostly from local tribes, who appear in some cases either to bless or at least not oppose the participation of their kin in the militant group.
Yemen's branch of the militant network, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has carried out years of bomb and gun attacks on the state, plotted to blow up U.S.-bound airliners and claimed responsibility for the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris in January that killed 12.
It and other Sunni militants have stepped up attacks since Shi'ite militiamen from the north, known as Houthis, seized the capital in September and expanded across the country. Over the past three weeks, an Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been bombing the Houthis.
Saudi-led warplanes pounded a rebel convoy headed to bolster an assault on loyalist forces in Yemen`s battleground second city Aden, while fighting raged in the third city of Taez, officials said Friday.
At least 20 rebels were killed, and two tanks and four armoured vehicles destroyed, in the overnight air strikes on the convoy headed out of Yemen`s largest air base, Al-Anad, provincial official Abedrabbo al-Mihwali said. The base was the main watch post for a long-running US-led war on Al-Qaeda in Yemen and its evacuation by Western troops as the rebels advanced last month has created a vacuum that the jihadists have exploited to make big territorial gains.
In Taez, in the central highlands north of Aden, at least 16 people were killed as soldiers that have remained loyal to exiled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi put up fierce resistance to an attack on their base by Huthi Shiite rebels and renegade troops. Three civilians were among the dead when a stray shell hit their home, a military source and residents said.
The 35th Brigade headquarters at the centre of the fighting escaped the lightning offensive that saw the rebels advance from their stronghold in the mainly Shiite northern mountains this spring into mainly Sunni central and southern provinces. The support of army units still loyal to longtime strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, ousted in 2012 after a bloody year-long uprising, has been crucial to their progress.
