Yemeni leader recovering in Saudi Arabia; Syria crackdown continues; US escalates Pakistan drone attacks
Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's president, was
evacuated
from Sanaa after a rocket attack on the presidential mosque killed
seven of his bodyguards and seriously injured several other political
leaders. Saleh himself sustained burns on an estimated 40 per cent of
his body and shrapnel wounds to his chest and neck. Crowds jubilantly
celebrated his departure in several cities.
The US called for an
immediate transition
in the southern Arabian Peninsula country, amid reports that Saleh
could return to Yemen within days. Yet medical sources said that his
rehabilitation could take several months.
As violence erupted across the nation, from Taiz to Zinjibar, the
New York Times reported that the US had
stepped up its air raids on suspected fighters.
Follow the latest news developments on our
Spotlight page and
Live Blog.
Syria crackdown continues, Violent suppression of anti-government protests in Syria resulted in
scores of deaths this week, most notably during "
Children's Freedom Friday"
rallies in the central city of Hama, site of a 1982 clampdown by Bashar
al-Assad's father. Dozens were killed when security forces opened fire
on demonstrators, pushing the death toll since March to more than 1,200.
Additional video emerged of severe brutality against
young protesters, as Syrians saw the mutilation of 15-year-old Thamer al-Sahri, who was arrested along with his friend Hamza al-Khateeb on
April 29.
Syrian troops sought revenge for the 120 security personnel who were
allegedly ambushed
by "armed gangs" in the northwestern town of Jisr al-Shughour. The
attacks on security forces raised the spectre of civil war, just days
after government troops had killed 38 people in a 24-hour
military operation in the same city.
Read more about the
Syria Unrest and visit our
Live Blog for more.
Revenge attacks in response to the US killing of Osama
bin Laden continued on Pakistani military and government targets. And
al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, vowed in a video eulogy to
continue the
organisation's jihad against the West.
Meanwhile, a key senior al-Qaeda commander, Ilyas Kashmiri, was
killed
with missiles fired by unmanned aerial vehicles while he was in a South
Waziristan house. Kashmiri had been linked to the November 2008 Mumbai
terror attacks.
Taliban fighters killed 12 in an attack on a
checkpoint in the border town of Makeen between North and South Waziristan. The raid was preceded by a series of
drone strikes that killed 23 fighters at an alleged training facility in the Shawal area.
In a suicide blast in Nowshera, 18 died and a further 40 were wounded.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but since
the May 2 raid that killed al-Qaeda's leader, the Pakistani Taliban has
said its fighters carried out a number of bombings.
