Gunmen ambushed and killed a senior army general as he traveled to his home village in the southern Yemen mountains, a region wracked by unrest, security sources said Wednesday.
Brigadier-General Ali Qaed Al Muaker, former chief of staff for eastern Yemen, died Tuesday in Daleh province, 460 kilometers (280 miles) south of the capital Sanaa, the sources told AFP.
People from Gahef village said he was shot twice in the head as he climbed on foot to see his sisters.
Police and military in Daleh declined to comment, but military sources in the capital Sanaa said that an investigation had been launched.
Daleh province has since 1998 been the scene of frequent clashes between soldiers and residents, who resent the army's deployment and want soldiers from the former southern Yemen to join the country's armed forces.
North and South Yemen were reunified in 1990, and the army put down a southern secessionist revolt in 1994 -- AFP
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
