Yemen News

Saudi forces pounded Yemeni rebels today for a fifth straight day as Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh ruled out a truce in his war on the Shiite insurgents.

'Brigadier General Ali Salem Al Ameri, security chief in Wadi Hadramut, and Ahmed Bawazeir, the head of state security in the area, and three security men were killed in an ambush,' the official said.

Yemen's civil war spilled into neighbouring Saudi Arabia for the first time yesterday when Shia gunmen shot dead a Saudi security officer in a cross-border attack.

While domestic insurgencies chip away at the control of Yemen's central government and an Al Qaeda branch gains strength in regions beyond the government's reach, another crisis - one that affects Yemen's entire population - has the potential to contribute to the country's instability and potential trajectory toward failure.

Yemen is running out of water - fast.

But the water crisis and the rise of militancy are not unrelated perils said Abdulrahman Al Eryani, Yemen's minister of Water and Environment, in an interview. Much of the country's rising militancy, he argues, is a conflict over resources.

Saudi soldiers carry the body of their comrade Turki al-Qahtani during his funeral in Jizan yesterday.

SANAA: Two top Yemeni security officers and four police escorts were killed when their car was ambushed on Tuesday by unidentified militants in the southeast of the country, where al-Qaida has been gaining strength.

Tens of thousands of people in Milhan District, Mahwit Governorate, around 100km northwest of the Yemeni capital Sanaa, are facing acute water shortages due to lack of rainfall, according to local officials.

At least one soldier was killed when an armed group launched an attack on Saturday night against a security facility in troubled southern Yemen, where secessionism is simmering, the ruling party's website Almotamar.net reported on Sunday.

Two sailors have been killed in an exchange of fire off the northeast coast of Somalia, after apparently trying to attack a Norwegian warship, Somali officials and an EU naval commander said.

The past 10 months saw the highest number of Africans reaching Yemeni shores over figures for the same period in 2008 and 2007, when large numbers began travelling to Yemen by boat, according to the UN Refugee Agency .

More than half of this country's scarce water is used to feed an addiction. Even as drought kills off Yemen 's crops, farmers in villages like this one are turning increasingly to a thirsty plant called qat, the leaves of which are chewed every day by most Yemeni men for their mild narcotic effect.

A Yemeni court on Saturday sentenced to death eight men involved in a Shi'ite rebellion, who were arrested last year for fighting government troops north of the country's capital, its news agency Saba reported.

About 60 Yemeni Jews have moved to the United States since July under a clandestine operation by State Department officials to escape anti-Jewish attacks in their homeland, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

Fighting in the north of Yemen has intensified since the army began a push against the rebels in August.

SANAA: Yemen's Coast Guard has seized a boat it says illegally entered the country's territorial waters and arrested five Iranians on board, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.

The government of Yemen has accused Iranian "religious institutions" of backing an armed rebellion against its rule after capturing an arms supply ship in the Red Sea.

FAMILIES saying goodbye to crew of HMAS Stuart were damp with tears and rain as the warship left Sydney on a six-month voyage to battle maritime piracy in the Middle East.

He could hear government fighter jets screaming across the sky, and he knew the Houthi rebels by their distinctive logos and headbands.

A passenger who tried to hijack a Yemeni domestic flight on Saturday was brought under control, official news agency SABA reported.

The Yemen Economic Corporation plays a pivotal role in national development and in achieving development stability throughout the country.