https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/11/middleeast/yemen-aden-southern-separatists-intl/index.html
2019-08-11 16:32:00Z
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Sarah El Sirgany reported from Abu Dhabi and Ivana Kottasová wrote from London. Nada AlTaher contributed to this article.
The interior minister of Yemen's internationally recognised government has said the United Arab Emirates won in the southern port city of Aden, a day after UAE-backed southern separatists took control of all government military camps and the presidential palace.
In a Twitter post published on his official account on Sunday, Ahmed al-Mayssari said: "We acknowledge defeat and congratulate the UAE on its victory … but this will not be our last battle."
He also blamed the Yemeni government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and ally Saudi Arabia for remaining "silent" about the developments that had unravelled in Aden over the past few days.
On Saturday, the Security Belt - a militia aligned with the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) which seeks the secession of the south - took effective control of various parts of Aden.
The city is the temporary seat of Hadi's government after the Houthi rebel movement seized the capital, Sanaa, in late 2014, prompting a military intervention the following year by a Saudi-UAE-led coalition in support of the president's forces and stop the rebels' southern advance.
But this week's deadly clashes between the UAE-backed separatists and the government troops highlighted a rift fracturing the alliance, threatening to open a new front in Yemen's five-year-war that has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed the impoverished country to the brink of famine.
The infighting began on Wednesday when forces loyal to the STC attempted to break into the presidential palace in Aden after a call from former Cabinet Minister Hani Bin Braik, who serves as the council's deputy head, to "topple" Hadi's government.
The violence has so far killed up to 40 people and injured 260 others, the United Nations said on Sunday.
The last few days of clashes had taken place in predominantly civilian neighbourhoods, leaving many trapped without access to hospitals, clinics, or markets.
According to al-Mayssari, around 400 armoured vehicles provided by the UAE launched attacks against his forces in Aden.
In his series of tweets, al-Mayssari said he viewed the Yemeni presidential office's silence regarding the latest events with "suspicion" and described the lack of reaction as inadequate.
"We condemn and we are surprised by its (Saudi Arabia's) silence for four days, while our partner in the coalition is slaughtering us," he said in a video posted online. "We will meet you soon on the ground."
Hadi, who was swept from power in 2014 when Houthi rebels overran Yemen's capital, Sanaa, is currently based in Saudi Arabia 's capital, Riyadh.
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Officials with his government accused the STC of staging a coup, and said they held the council and the UAE "fully responsible".
Saudi's King Salman met Hadi and members of his cabinet on Sunday, Saudi Arabia's state news agency SPA reported.
The two discussed "the latest developments in the region, particularly in Yemen," the statement said, without adding more details.
It was only shortly after separatists announced their forces had seized the palace on Saturday night that the Saudi-led coalition called for an immediate ceasefire.
"[The coalition] asserts that it will use military force against anyone who violates it [ceasefire]," Saudi Arabia's state news agency SPA quoted a spokesman as saying.
The coalition had also called on all military groups to immediately return to their positions and retreat from areas that have been seized over the past few days.
Writing on Twitter to mark Eid al-Adha on Sunday, Brik, the STC vice president, said while the council remained committed to the coalition it would "not negotiate under duress".
It had earlier agreed to the truce.
Al Jazeera's Mohammed al-Attab, reporting from Sanaa, said people in the south were expecting Saudi Arabia to declare another "decisive military campaign against the separatists … similar to the one launched against the Houthis in the north".
Despite its jets monitoring the area for advancements, al-Attab noted the separatists have already taken control of all the military camps.
"Observers say Saudi is turning a blind eye to what's happening," he added.
"The STC seems to have the upper hand on the ground, especially with the UAE loading hundreds of armoured vehicles and weaponry."
The UAE, which announced recently the beginning of a troop withdrawal from Yemen, has armed and trained an estimated 90,000 allied fighters in the south.
In a statement on Friday, International Crisis Group warned that the clashes in Aden "threaten to tip southern Yemen into a civil war within a civil war".
Such a conflict would deepen what is already the world's worst humanitarian crisis and make a national political settlement harder to achieve. In the past, half-measures helped de-escalate simmering tensions in the south; today's circumstances require robust diplomatic intervention from the UN, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to avoid the worst and help forge a durable solution."
HONG KONG (AP) — Police fired tear gas Sunday in confrontations with protesters in three parts of Hong Kong, as another evening of clashes began playing out in the Asian financial capital.
Protesters hurled bricks at officers and ignored warnings to leave before tear gas was deployed in the Sham Shui Po area, police said, calling a march there an "unauthorized assembly." Nearby, protesters wearing gas masks gathered outside a police station in Cheung Sha Wan, as officers wearing their own protective gear looked down at them from a tall wall around the station.
Tear gas was also deployed in central Hong Kong on both sides of Victoria Harbour, in the Tsim Sha Tsui area on the Kowloon side and in Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island.
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Earlier, a large group of mostly young protesters marched down the middle of Hennessey Road, a main shopping drag in the Causeway Bay area, as a rally was held in nearby Victoria Park. Many wore face masks to shield their identities, and a few had helmets. Others just carried backpacks over the black T-shirts that have become their uniform.
"We hope the world knows that Hong Kong is not the Hong Kong it used to be," said one protester, Louisa Ho. "China is doing more and more to pressure Hong Kong, its people and its organizations."
Hong Kong has seen nine weeks of protests with no end in sight. The movement's demands include the resignation of the city's leader, democratic elections, the release of those arrested in earlier protests and an investigation into police use of force against the protesters
Banners at the rally in Victoria Park read "Give Hong Kong back to us" and "Withdraw the evil law," the latter a reference to an extradition bill that was the original spark for the protests. A large crowd sat under umbrellas, which are both a protest symbol in Hong Kong and protection from the summer heat.
Hannah Yu, an organizer, said the protest would provide a platform for people to rally peacefully. In what has become an established pattern, groups of protesters have taken over streets or besieged government buildings after largely peaceful marches and rallies earlier in the day.
"There will still be citizens going out on the streets to protest, but we cannot control them and we do not have the authority to control them," Yu said.
Police permitted the rally in Victoria Park but denied a request by organizers to also have a march in the eastern part of Hong Kong Island. Police also denied permission for the march in Kowloon, but protesters went ahead anyway.
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Associated Press videojournalist Katie Tam contributed to this report.
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HONG KONG—Protests across the city deteriorated into urban battle scenes in several different neighborhoods, as demonstrators defied stern warnings from Beijing and continued to take their message to the streets in often unpredictable directions during a 10th consecutive weekend of unrest.
Thousands of protesters Sunday descended on tourist destinations and residential neighborhoods alike, building metal barricades and some throwing bricks and what police identified as smoke bombs. Live footage showed at least one flaming projectile that appeared to be a Molotov cocktail. Police equipped with riot gear used tear gas to disperse crowds. Meanwhile, a peaceful sit-in at the airport continued into a third day.
The fluid nature of the increasingly violent protests presents a challenge for authorities and residents. In the Wan Chai district, outside the police headquarters, there was little out of the ordinary at 5 p.m. Sunday, with people enjoying drinks on a popular bar street. Just an hour later, protesters arrived and began building barricades and waving lasers at police. Soon, riot police fired multiple volleys of tear gas. Bars closed and hotels lowered their shutters, keeping guests inside for their safety.
The protests this summer reflect the outpouring of public anger at Hong Kong’s government, sparked by an extradition bill that would allow those in Hong Kong to be tried under mainland China’s opaque legal system. The Hong Kong government eventually shelved the bill, declaring it “dead,” but has yet to formally withdraw it.
The protest movement has maintained its momentum—fueled by frustrations with the government’s handling of the situation, allegations that police have used excessive force while dispersing protesters and demands for democratic overhauls—even as Beijing has signaled its growing intolerance for the dissent and local authorities have said the protracted tensions could plunge the city into a recession.
Clashes had been expected in North Point, an area populated with immigrants from Fujian province in southeast China and the site of a clash between protesters and stick-waving men a week before. In recent days, rumors of a similar confrontation spread on social media. Pro-China signs were posted Sunday on a main commercial street along with the occasional Chinese flag.
More than 10,000 Hokkien-speaking people live around North Point, forming a community that has supported China since the 1960s. It was a main clash point during a monthslong riot in 1967, when leftist Hongkongers with Beijing’s support clashed with the ruling British government.
On Saturday, representatives of the Fujian group held a rally and vowed to protect their adopted home. Chanting slogans in both Mandarin and Cantonese supporting the chief executive and the police, they chanted that violence needed to be stopped and chaos should end. In a speech Wednesday, China’s top official for Hong Kong affairs urged patriotic residents of the city to stand up to violent protesters.
On Sunday, police officers and reporters gathered around a group of men in red T-shirts who said they were from Fujian. A few scuffles broke out between the red-shirted men and the reporters, with some local journalists getting in heated discussions. A scrum of press and the men briefly spilled from the sidewalk into the street amid pushing and shoving. But by 7 p.m. the protesters still hadn’t shown up.
At one point men chased a supposed protester down the street, as other men loitering in front of shuttered storefronts kicked and punched him. Dozens of police sought to contain the scuffles and appeared to detain one person. Several police vans were parked in the area.
As they had done Saturday, protesters Sunday spontaneously crowded around the entrance of a cross-harbor tunnel, letting vehicles go without paying toll fees. They appeared to have adopted suggestions from the chat groups frequented by protesters, after the blocking of a tunnel last on Monday annoyed other citizens.
The huge crowds of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators at the start of the summer have given way to smaller groups of mobile protests using more-aggressive tactics, such as lighting fires on roads and hurling objects toward police.
Police said Sunday they arrested 16 people the day before, on charges including for unlawful assembly. Hong Kong’s police said they have made nearly 600 arrests and fired more than 1,800 rounds of tear gas and at least 160 rubber bullets since the protests began two months before.
—John Lyons and Jon Emont contributed to this article.
Write to Natasha Khan at natasha.khan@wsj.com, Wenxin Fan at Wenxin.Fan@wsj.com and Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com
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In a week of three eerie explosions across scarce landscapes in Russia, the death toll including the five killed in a recent deadly radiation explosion is now 10. But Russia’s nuclear energy cooperation said two of the bodies of five research workers killed in the latest explosion, which took place on Thursday, have been hurled into the sea after they disappeared. The five were killed when a rocket engine test went wrong triggering a biblical explosion caught on camera by a terrified resident that felt it miles away.
Rosatom - the country’s state nuclear energy corporation - said in a statement the men’s bodies have been thrown into the sea.
The statement read: “After the explosion, some Rosatom employees were thrown into the sea.”
The statement added: “They were searched for while there was a hope to find them alive.”
The move raises questions first over why the explosions occurred and secondly, whether the bodies may have been contaminated.
The workers have yet to be formally identified, but Russia has released the family names - Yanovsky and Lipshev - of the bodies discarded.
Rotasom said the radiation explosion happened on an offshore platform.
The family names of the others who died have had their full names released by Moscow.
They are Yevgeny Korotayev, Sergey Pichugin and Vladislav Yanovskiy.
READ MORE: Russia explosion: Evacuations and huge exclusion zone after blasts
Details of the original "spike" report were later removed.
Rotasom’s statement continued: “Rosatom will provide financial support to the families of the deceased employees, and this is not just about one-time assistance.”
Russia’s Ecoprotection group co-chairman Vladimir Slivyak said: “The situation is very alarming because effectively no information is being released and nothing is being admitted.”
Authorities have shut down part of the White Sea for a month after the incident.
But public shipping information from Arkhangelsk port showed the area had been closed for the preceding month, without explanation.
Greenpeace cited data from the Emergencies Ministry that it said showed radiation levels had risen 20 times above the normal level.
There have been three catastrophic explosions in Russia this week with one triggering the lockdown of a Russian military base.
Locals were urged to take precautions against radiation.
A Russian nuclear expert told the BBC that the Russian Ministry of Defence has refused to disclose the details behind the mysterious lockdown of the base.
Dr Mark Galeotti said the incident was “clearly a bigger issue than the Russians are letting on”.
The incidents come days after it was reported the infamous Chernobyl nuclear power plant will have a new “sarcophagus” contracted over it, following fears the one contracted in 1986 in the immediate aftermath of the explosion risks collapsing due to the huge amount of concrete involved.
When the Chernobyl explosion happened in Ukraine, it was ruled all RMBK nuclear reactors would be banned in the Soviet Union. The USSR collapsed in 1992.