Second military officer shot dead in southern Yemen

Source: AFP, 04/07/2010
A Yemeni army officer was found shot to death in southern Yemen, where police arrested two Al-Qaeda suspects for the second such killing in as many days, local security officials said on Saturday.

"The body of Colonel Abdallah Al-Metri, shot by unknown people, was found by local inhabitants of Batis," in the Khanfar region of southern Abyan province, a local official told AFP.

The body of the officer, who was killed overnight, was abandoned "close to the site of the army unit in which he served," he added, saying that an investigation was underway.

It was the second killing of a military officer in Abyan, where frequent incidents of violence are blamed on southern separatists and Al-Qaeda activists.

On Thursday, a gunman on a motorbike shot and killed commander Saleh Amdheib at the market in Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan, the defence ministry's 26sep.net website said.

Police found the murder weapon used in that killing after arresting two Al-Qaeda suspects and a pair of "outlaws," the website reported on Saturday.

Tensions have risen in Yemen's south since a June 19 attack on the intelligence headquarters in the port city of Aden that killed 11 people, seven of them soldiers.

Authorities said the attack was carried out by Al-Qaeda.

They also accuse the Southern Movement, a coalition pressing for greater autonomy or independence for south Yemen, of links to the terror network, a charge the group denies.

Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden