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Grip on Yemen town tightened" by Associated Press / May 30, 2011Hundreds of Islamic militants cemented control over a town in southern Yemen yesterday, military officials said, while breakaway army units encouraged other military forces to switch their loyalties and join the uprising.
If you oppose the Empire and its order then you are an "Islamic militant" or "terrorist."
The militants stormed Zinjibar, a town of about 20,000 people near the Gulf of Aden, on Friday, occupying banks and government offices.
I can see where that got hackles up in certain quarters.
Military officials said the militants extended their control late Saturday night, capturing six army tanks and several armored cars after the governor, the security chief, and the commander of a local army brigade withdrew. Medical and military officials said eight civilians and 18 soldiers have been killed since Saturday.
The growing number of defections in the military posed the most serious threat yet to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s three-decade grip on his country....
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"Yemeni jets bomb town seized by Islamists" by Associated Press / May 31, 2011
SANA, Yemen — Yemeni forces opened fire on a protest camp and killed more than 20 demonstrators yesterday in the southern city of Taiz while government warplanes launched air strikes on another southern town seized by radical Islamists.
The new attempts to suppress the uprising against President Ali Abdullah Saleh with overwhelming force, after a weekend when high-level military defectors formed a united front in support of the protesters, all pointed to the longtime leader’s increasingly tenuous grip on power....
More than three months of mass street protests have posed an unprecedented threat to Saleh’s 33-year rule, splintering his security forces and battering the country’s already frail economy.
His days are numbered.
Saleh has raised the specter of an Islamist takeover of Yemen to solicit international funds and rebuff calls that he stand down.
Government jets bombed the town’s outskirts yesterday, the loud booms sending up columns of smoke, resident Ali Dahmis said by phone. He said the army was targeting residential areas.
The strikes were the government’s hardest hit yet against the Islamists since hundreds of them streamed in Friday, seizing banks and government buildings.
Did Obama or the administration say something and I just missed it?
Going to get a no-fly zone going, right?
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