Yemeni president returns from Riyadh
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Xinhua, September 23, 2011
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh returned to his restive nation Friday morning from Saudi Arabia, the state-run TV and Saba news agency reported.
"President of the Republic, Ali Abdullah Saleh, returned this morning to the land of Yemen safely after a medical trip in Riyadh that lasted more than three months," reads a caption aired by the state TV.
Saleh received medical treatment in Riyadh after being injured in a bomb attack early June.
Saleh's return came after six straight days of deadly clashes between his supporters and defected army troops backed by opposition tribal rebels in the capital, which left at least 111 people dead and nearly 1,000 injured.
Despite continuing meditation efforts by the UN envoy to Yemen and chief of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Yemen is still in the grip of a political standoff and heavy clashes.
An official from the Interior Ministry told Xinhua that all roads linking the Sanaa airport and the presidential palace in the southern part of the capital were blocked by the Republican Guard troops and that Saleh had earlier arrived at his presidential compound.
"Sanaa and other major cities will witness this evening a fireworks celebration of Saleh's safe return after the assassination attack on June 3," he spoke on condition of anonymity.
Saleh's supporters in Sanaa, Ibb, Thamar, Taiz and other provinces fired heavy gunshots to the air to celebrate the president's return, eyewitnesses said.
"I heard the news of the president's return from the Sanaa state Radio,and now I along with dozens of ruling party's members are in our way to Sanaa to celebrate Saleh's return," tribal leader Sheikh Mohamed Kasim told Xinhua from the southern province of Ibb, some 150 km south of Sanaa.
The embattled president has faced eight-month-long protest demanding an immediate end to his 33-year rule.
An hour after Saleh's arrival at his presidential compound, government troops resumed heavy shelling on squares where anti-Saleh protesters were gathered in Sanaa and Taiz, the country's second largest city in the south, killing at least one protester in Sanaa and injuring dozens in Taiz, medics told Xinhua.
Residents of Hassaba districts in downtown Sanaa told Xinhua the Republican Guard troops bombarded the residential compounds of opposition tribal leader Sadiq al-Ahmar and his brothers, confirming that one of al-Ahmar's armed followers was killed and several others were injured.
A large number of foreigners, especially employees in the UN branch office in Sanaa and in Western embassies left Yemen, the official of the Interior Ministry said.
Huge explosions could be heard across the capital, especially in the districts of Hadda, Hassaba and near the state television.
"Saleh's return is none of our business... It's the business of street protesters now," opposition spokesman Mohamed Qahtan told Xinhua, declining to comment further.
Another opposition official warned that "Saleh has no real intention to transfer the power peacefully, instead he clearly intends to suppress the uprising with more massacres on protester-held squares."
Bushra al-Maktary, a leading protester in Taiz city, told Xinhua that "Saleh's return is an official declaration of war."
