Sana'a: Vicious sectarian battles have errupted in two northern Yemen provinces between Shiite rebels and armed Sunni tribes.
Dozens of fighters from both sides have been killed in the recent escalation of fighting according to local tribesmen.
A Sunni fighter in the Shiite dominated province of Sa'ada told Gulf News from the battle field that fighting with the Al Houthis has seen no respite for months. He claimed that his colleagues have managed to achieve considerable victory on the ground.
"Thanks to Allah we successfully repelled their attacks and we controll some of the areas that they used control. We killed 600 Al Houthi fighters." The fighter, who is a student at the Sunni Dar Al Hadeth religious school in Sa'ada, said that many foreign fighters have been engaged in battles against Al Houthis.
"We have brothers from America, Russia, Indonesia and other nationalities who rushed to help us. We have also other Yemeni fighters." Fighting between the two sects sparked in October last year when Al Houthis imposed a blockade on Dar Al Hadeth, accusing the Salafis, who run the school, of fomenting hatred against Shiite.
Elsewhere, similar fighting brutally took place in the northern province of Hajja. Yahya Al Suaidi, a local tribal leader, told Gulf News that Al Houthi rebels controlled drinking waters sources in the district of Kushier, the epicenter of fighting, preventing people from get access to the water. "They besieged Kushier and did not allow injured people to get medical treatment, students cannot go to school and the overall situation is miserable." Yahya said that Al Houthis intensified their attacks on the district of Kushier because they couldn't regain their areas from the tribesmen.
"We succeeded in stopping the advance of Al Houthis. They want to impose their ideology by force." Al Houthi rebels, on the other hand, have repeatedly accused Salafis of recruiting foreign fighters to extinguish Al Houthis from the two provinces. Months of fighting have forced hundreds of families to flee their homes and take shelter in surrounding areas.
"The old government did nothing to stop the war in Hajja. We hope that the new government will step in." Yahya said.
Meanwhile, mutinous air force officers organized a military parade in the capital to pressure the new president to meet their demands of removing their commander, General Mohammed Saleh Al Ahmer, the force's top commander and half brother of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The protesters accuse their commander of mismanagement and corruption. The airmen have been camping out at the house of the former Yemeni president since January and vowed to stay out until Al Ahmer is dismissed from his post. The airmen say that if the military committee continue to neglect their demand they would organize more aggressive protests across the country.
