Witness Fadhel Mubarek said law and order broke down in the
city after government troops fled for their lives. Armed gangs looted banks and
all government facilities.
Hundreds of families are leaving the city despite militant
assurances that they mean no harm to the civilian population and their aim is
to establish an Islamic state, Mubarek said.
After withdrawing from the city, Yemeni troops shelled it
with tanks and heavy guns. The militants responded by firing rocket-propelled
grenades.
“Bodies of dead soldiers are in the streets and no one is
able to remove them due to heavy shelling. Residents are trapped in their
houses without water and electricity in extremely hot weather," Mubarek
said.
Another witness said the militants were combing the city in
search of security officials to settle scores.
Opponents of the country's embattled president, Ali Abdullah
Saleh, accused him of allowing the militants to freely seize Zinjibar in a bid
to stoke Western fears that Al-Qaeda would take over the country if he
responded to demands by demonstrators to step down.
In another development, a brigade of the powerful Republican
Guard has defected to the opposition in a southern province. Activist
Abdul-Rahman Ahmed said a letter from Brig. Gen. Ibrahim Al-Jayfi, commander of
the Guard's Ninth Brigade, was read to thousands of protesters in the
provincial capital of Damar on Sunday.
Sheikh Sadeq Al-Ahmar of the powerful Hashid tribal
confederation, whose fighters battled Saleh's troops for five days last week,
has called on the Republican Guard to help topple Saleh.
In the capital Sanaa, a truce between the government forces
and tribesmen loyal to Al-Ahmar held. "Today we agreed to hand over the
Ministry of Local Administration to tribal mediators as a gesture of good will
and to prevent more bloodshed. We still control the Ministries of Industry,
Endowment and Tourism," Abdul Qawi Al-Qaisi, spokesman for Al-Ahmar, told
Arab News.
Al-Qaisi accused Saleh's forces of taking advantage of the
truce to deploy more troops in the Hasaba district.
In Hadramaut province, security forces were searching for
three French citizens who went missing Saturday in the city of Seiyun.