Sana’a: Al Qaida’s black flag is flying over several official buildings in Yemen’s second city Aden as the militants make inroads in the absence of state authority and with the country mired in conflict.
In Tawahi, the flag has been hoisted over the police station and is flown on cars ferrying bearded men across one of the largest districts of the port city, residents say.
“Armed men of Al Qaida control our whole district, even if there are only a few dozen of them,” said Raefat, a 32-year-old employee of Yemeni radio and television.
With the capital Sana’a under the control of Al Houthi militants for the past year, the exiled government returned to Aden as its “provisional capital” in September.
Prime Minister Khaled Bahah and his team returned to Riyadh after a deadly October 6 attack claimed by Daesh on an Aden hotel that was being used to house the government.
A government security official told AFP that Al Qaida are active in several areas “like Crater, Khor Maksar and Brigua, where their presence is growing stronger by the day”.
The official, declining to be named, said he “fears the city will fall under their total control in the absence of the state”.
Three months later, hundreds of young gunmen now control most public buildings in the city, according to residents, contacted from Sana’a.
Aden police chief General Mohammad Mussaed says his men are “cooperating with our Popular Resistance brothers to resolve the security problem and restore police posts... a big challenge”.
But Aden residents say they fear the masked gunmen who roam the streets, especially after assailants on motorbikes gunned down at least six people, with Yemen’s Al Qaida franchise the prime suspect.
“We are counting on the cooperation of the youth of the Popular Resistance to restore security,” said the city’s police chief.
While Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour has called for such irregular forces to be integrated into the army, impoverished Yemen in the thick of a conflict which has cost about 4,500 civilian lives since March does not have the financial resources for such an operation.
“These armed men claim to be part of the Popular Resistance but nobody knows what group they belong to,” protested Majed Ahmad, a resident of Dar Sa’ad, another Aden district where Al Qaida’s flag flutters over a disused police post.
To finance their operations, Al Qaida fighters have seized $6 million worth of diesel from a local port and sold it on the city’s black market, according to an Aden refinery official.
Elsewhere in southern Yemen, Al Qaida has had control of Al Mukalla, Yemen’s third largest port and capital of Hadramout province, since April.
At the start of October, its fighters occupied an administrative complex in Zinjibar, capital of Abyan, one of five southern provinces recaptured from Al Houthis.
