ADEN: Yemeni troops shot dead a gunman and wounded another after they attacked an army checkpoint in the southern Lahj province, residents and a military official said yesterday.
The army late on Saturday shot dead Abdulmajid Mabrouk and wounded Basil Al-Baghdadi, identified as an activist in the separatist Southern Movement, at a checkpoint in Huta, the capital of Lahj, residents said.
A military official confirmed the incident saying that “an army checkpoint in Huta responded after it came under fire,” without giving further details.
The assault in one of the movement’s strongholds in the south comes two days after a newspaper quoted President Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi accusing Iran of backing a faction of the Southern Movement seeking to secede by force of arms.
“In the south, there are two movements: a peaceful one and another, which is not,” the pan-Arab Al-Hayat daily quoted him as saying in remarks published on Friday. “The latter resorts to the use of weapons, receives Iranian assistance and works for secession” of south Yemen, which was a separate state until 1990, Hadi charged.
Some factions of the Southern Movement want autonomy for the south, but more hard-line members are pressing for a return to complete independence.
Separatist killed at Yemen checkpoint
Separatist killed at Yemen checkpoint
The West Bank soccer field slated for demolition by Israel
- The move is likely to eliminate one of the few spaces where Palestinian children are able to run and play
BETHLEHEM: Israeli authorities have ordered the demolition of a soccer field in a crowded refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, eliminating one of the few spaces where Palestinian children are able to run and play.
“If the field gets demolished, this will destroy our dreams and our future. We cannot play any other place but this field, the camp does not have spaces,” said Rital Sarhan, 13, who plays on a girls’ soccer team in the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem.
The Israeli military issued a demolition order for the soccer field on December 31, saying it was built illegally in an area that abuts the concrete barrier wall that Israel built in the West Bank.
“Along the security fence, a seizure order and a construction prohibition order are in effect; therefore, the construction in the area was carried out unlawfully,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Mohammad Abu Srour, an administrator at Aida Youth Center, which manages the field, said the military gave them seven days to demolish the field.
The Israeli military often orders Palestinians to carry out demolitions themselves. If they do not act, the military steps in to destroy the structure in question and then sends the Palestinians a bill for the costs.
According to Abu Srour, Israel’s military told residents when delivering the demolition order that the soccer field represented a threat to the separation wall and to Israelis.
“I do not know how this is possible,” he said.
Israeli demolitions have drawn widespread international criticism and coincide with heightened fears among Palestinians of an organized effort by Israel to formally annex the West Bank, the area seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel accelerated demolitions in Palestinian refugee camps in early 2025, leading to the displacement of 32,000 residents of camps in the central and northern West Bank. Human Rights Watch has called the demolitions a war crime. Israel has said they are intended to disrupt militant activity.
