Despite reassurances from state officials that the impoverished nation has made great strides toward a finding a consensual solution to its over-lapping crises, instability continues to spread as wildfire throughout.
After reports over the past weeks of violence, dissidence and bloodshed in the provinces of Hadhramawt, Lahj, al-Dhali and Aden, officials confirmed on Friday that clashes have reached the oil rich province of Marib.
Instable since 2011 uprising as tribes loyal to the former regime opposed state reforms and change as to protect their immediate interests, both political and financial, Marib tribesmen have grown ever bolder in their targeting of state infrastructures, always running sabotage operations against power lines and oil facilities to exert pressure onto President Abdo Rabbo Hadi.
On Friday tribesmen came to clash with the military when they attempted engineers to repair a segment of Marib pipeline. A senior army official and three tribesmen were killed as a result.
AP quoted a government source as saying that “a military unit and tribesmen exchanged gunfire as troops headed to secure and repair a damaged pipeline in the city of Marib.”
The source went on alleging that the tribesmen were in allegiance with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, bent on generating mayhem to hinder all political progress and fail the National Dialogue Conference.
These new claims came amid more whispers that Yemen’s former strongman would seek to depose President Hadi as to introduce his return to the presidency. It is important to note that such whispers, however many they might be, have been backed up by facts.