Violence claims six

ADEN — A high-ranking police officer, a soldier and four insurgents were killed in separate acts of violence in south Yemen, a security official and witnesses said yesterday.

The police official said Mubarak Barafaa, head of a criminal investigation unit, was cut down by machinegun fire late on Friday close to his house in Ghayl Ba Wazir, in the southeastern province of Hadramawt.

He was fatally wounded and died soon afterwards in hospital in Mukalla, the provincial capital, added the official, saying the gunmen “who were probably members of armed group” made good their escape. No group has yet admitted responsibility for the murder.

Elsewhere, a soldier and four insurgents were killed in overnight clashes in the southern city of Zinjibar, capital of Abyan province, a local official said.

The clashes flared after insurgents pounded a military barracks east of Zinjibar, said the official, adding that a tank was destroyed in the attack.

Troops have been trying to regain control of Zinjibar, which fell last May to insurgents.

Meanwhile, Yemeni troops killed four fighters in a southern town they seized from government control, a local official said yesterday, but a spokesman for the radicals denied his side had suffered any casualties.

The fighting in Zinjibar, capital of the southern Abyan province where bands have taken control of swathes of territory in the last seven months. — Reuters