At least five killed in Yemen blast: witness
SANAA (AFP) — At least five people were killed on Saturday in an explosion in central Saada, a town in northwest Yemen at the focus of a Shiite revolt, a witness said
A local official said two people had died, but the witness said at least five were killed in the blast outside Saada's post office.
Rescue services evacuated the casualties as security forces sealed off the area, said the witness who asked not to be named.
Yemen's mountainous Saada province on the border with Saudi Arabia has been the heartland of an on-off uprising launched by Zaidi Shiite rebels in 2004 in which thousands of people have died.
Tribal sources said clashes between troops and rebels have resumed in recent days, with heavy fighting in the region's Marran mountains.
A local official in Saada gave a lower casualty figure for Saturday's blast and said the attack bore the hallmarks of the rebels.
The official, who requested anonymity, told AFP that two civilians were killed and seven others wounded in the blast.
"Preliminary investigations indicate that the explosion resulted from a bomb thrown" by an unidentified person and there authorities were trying to track down the attacker, he said.
The official said suspicions centred on the rebels, whom authorities had blamed for a May 2 bombing outside a Saada mosque which killed 18 people, mostly soldiers. The rebels denied responsibility.
The rebels are fighting to restore the Zaidi imamate which was overthrown in a 1962 republican coup. An offshoot of Shiite Islam, Zaidis are a minority in the mainly Sunni country but the majority in the northwest.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh is himself a Zaidi but the rebels reject his regime as illegitimate.
The two sides signed a Qatari-brokered peace deal in June, 2007, but there has been repeated wrangling about its implementation. In February they met again in Qatar to revive the deal.
The accord requires the government to release rebel prisoners, dismantle roadblocks and withdraw troops from areas of Saada province in return for rebel disarmament.
Each side accuses the other of reneging on the deal.
