TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A total of six military personnel were killed while three others injured when an ethnic rebel militia ambushed an oil production facility in the province of Hadhramouth in Southeast Yemen on Wednesday evening, according to an official statement as quoted by Xinhua.
"A group of armed ethnic militia launched an assault on a foreign oil company, which is headquartered in Hadhramouth. The attack resulted in the death of six soldiers, which were tasked to secure the compound," said a local security official who refused to be named.
"The rebels attempted to take over the compound, but military officials in charge of securing the area successfully rebuffed their attempt after a brief armed exchange," said the source to Xinhua.
Meanwhile, in the port city of Aden, several armed separatists also clashed with several other security officials on Wednesday, injuring six soldiers and destroying a military vehicle.
A senior leader of the pro-separatist group Southern Movement, which has been identified as Bagash Al-Aghbary, is known to be wounded from the brief firefight in Aden, according to the reports of several youth movements.
Previously on February 6, the Shiite Houthi movement unilaterally dissolved the Yemeni Parliament and formed a presidential council, which assumed the executive powers in the Republic—a move which has been widely condemned by Yemen's ruling party, as well as Yemen's allies in the Gulf.
Situation begun to worsen in Yemen since January, when the Houthis took control of Yemen's Presidential Palace in Sanaa, after a deadly clash with Yemen's Presidential Guard.
As a result, President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and Prime Minister Khaled Bahah handed in their formal resignation from their respective posts on January 22.
The Houthis, which also goes by the name of Ansarullah, have continued to expand their influence towards the southern part of the country ever since an United Nations (UN) mediated a peace treaty, which included several separation of power clauses within Yemen, was signed on September 21, 2014.
ANTARA
