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Yemen urges rebels to surrender as death toll rises
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-07-04 11:13
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh called on Saturday on an anti-US rebel
cleric to surrender and end nearly two weeks of fighting in which 118 rebels and
government forces have been killed.
Saleh said security forces had besieged Hussein al-Houthi and his supporters
in the mountainous north of the country after he refused to be taken into
custody and stand trial for "harming Yemen's stability and interests".
"Even now blood is being shed ... We tell Houthi to surrender and he will
have a fair trial," Saleh said, speaking to Muslim scholars. His comments were
carried on the official news agency, Saba.
Interior Minister Rshad al-Alimi said earlier that 86 of Houthi's supporters
and 32 government forces had been killed since military action against the group
began on June 20 in Saada province, 240 km (150 miles) north of the capital
Sanaa.
He said 331 members of Houthi's group had been arrested, most of them before
the clashes.
Sources close to Houthi have put the death toll from the clashes at about
200.
"Houthi refused all mediation efforts by parliamentarians, Muslim scholars
and government officials to surrender peacefully," the minister said, adding
that a siege continued.
The government accuses Houthi, a leader of the Zaidi Shi'ite sect, of setting
up unlicensed religious centres in Saada and other provinces and forming what it
describes as an underground armed group called the "Believing Youth", which has
staged violent protests against the United States and Israel.
The president said Houthi's group had attacked mosques and urged Yemenis to
arm themselves against possible attacks by the United States. The cleric had
also said in his lectures that democracy would bring a Jewish leader to power in
Yemen.
Anti-US sentiment is high in the region over the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq
and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some clerics in Yemen preach hatred
against America and the West.
The poor country of 19 million people is also fighting to root out militants
linked to Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group. Houthi has not been
accused of links to al Qaeda.
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