SANAA - Twenty-five gunmen have been killed in three days of fighting between tribesmen and rebels in Yemen’s north, an official said Sunday, as the toll of foreigners including Westerners killed in sectarian clashes soared.
The clashes flared on Friday in Hajja province, a day after 20 other gunmen were killed in fighting between Sunni Salafists and Zaidi Shiite rebels in a separate northern town, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Tribes involved in the latest fighting, in Hajja’s Wadi Misyar region, are allied with Sunni fundamentalists who have for months been battling Shiites in the north, the official added.
Fighting between Sunni fundamentalists and Huthi rebels has also raged in the northern town of Dammaj, where a Salafist Islamic teaching school was besieged by the rebels.
A spokesman for a local Salafist support committee said on Sunday that at least 32 foreigners have been killed by Shiite attacks on the Dar al-Hadith Sunni fundamentalist Institute since mid-October.
Mohammed al-Ghurban, from the Popular Committee for the Support of Dammaj, said the recent deadly clashes have killed at least “four Russians, four Frenchmen, five Indonesians and one Indian.” One British citizen, two Americans, one Ethiopian, one Malaysian and 13 Arab nationals were also killed in the attacks, he said adding that 41 other foreigners were wounded in the violence.
The foreigners were studying at Dar al-Hadith and were among a total of 71 people killed, including five children and one woman, since the sectarian strife erupted in October, according to the school spokesman, Al-Sorur Wadii.
In 2004, Zaidi Shiites, who regularly complain of inequality and marginalisation by the central government, rebelled against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime.
Thousands of Yemenis were killed before a ceasefire was declared in February 2010.