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Government forces kill 17 rebels in northern Yemen

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

The government of Yemen has said that it killed at least seventeen suspected members of a rebel group in the northern part of the country on Thursday.

The rebels, belonging to the Shi'ite Huthi group, were killed after violence overnight in Saada, a mountainous region in northern Yemen.

"The army and security forces have inflicted heavy losses upon the saboteurs and the rebels whether in terms of lives or equipment," a local official said as quoted by the Saba news agency.

Skirmishes between Yemeni forces and the Houthi rebels, named after their former leader Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, began during the 2004 Sa'dah insurgency. Clashes between the two have escalated in recent weeks, as the fighters attempted to overthrow the government.


Sources