Yemen commanders join opposition

Three senior army figures defect to side of protesters calling for removal of President Ali Abdullah Saleh Three Yemen army commanders, including a top general, have defected to the opposition calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, as tanks were deployed in the streets of the capital. The most senior of the three officers is Major General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a long-time confidant of Saleh and commander of the army’s powerful 1st Armoured Division. Units of the division were deployed on Monday in a major square in Sana’a, where protesters have been camping out to call for Saleh to step down. All three officers belong to Saleh’s Hashid tribe, which called on the president to step down on Sunday, delivering a serious blow to his attempts to cling on to power. The two others are Mohammed Ali Mohsen and Hameed al-Qusaibi, both brigadiers. News of the defections came one day after crowds flooded cities and towns across Yemen to mourn dozens of protesters killed on Friday, when Saleh’s security forces opened fire from rooftops on a demonstration in Sana’a . Ahmar has been a close aide of Saleh for most of the 32 years the Yemeni president has been in power. He is a veteran of the 1994 civil war in which Saleh’s army suppressed an attempt by southern Yemen to secede four years after the two parts of the impoverished Arab nation united. The south had until then been a separate nation. Ahmar also fought in recent years against Shia rebels in the north. Ahmar announced his defection in a message delivered by a close aide to the protest leaders at the Sana’a square, the epicentre of their movement. Yemen Middle East Arab and Middle East protests guardian.co.uk

Posted by on March 21, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.