Yemen, August 19: A woman has been killed and eight policemen wounded in two separate attacks in Yemen as sporadic violence continues in the secessionist south.
Five policemen were wounded in an explosion on Wednesday when a masked militant on a bike threw a hand grenade through the window of a police station in Zinjibar in Abyan province,
Local medics said two of the policemen were critically wounded and had been transferred to a hospital in Aden, while the assailant managed to escape.
Elsewhere, a woman was killed and two police officers wounded in a shooting that broke out between a security patrol and a wanted southern fighter identified as Jamil Ali Saif.
Saif, who is wanted for murder, reportedly fired at the police officers as they attempted to arrest him in al-Afar area of the Lahj province. He managed to run away after the police refrained from firing at him to avoid harming civilians in the vicinity.
On Monday, masked gunmen killed a Yemeni intelligence officer in a market in Zinjibar before fleeing.
South Yemen is feared to have become a base for militants linked to what the US administration calls “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.”
Frequent protests and periodic unrest occur in the south where many accuse the Sana’a government of discriminatory allocation of resources.
South Yemen was independent from 1967 until it united with the north in 1990. It attempted to break away in 1994 but northern troops won a short-lived conflict that followed and overran the south.
—Agencies