(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Yemeni Shia rebels dug in their heels yesterday after rejecting the newly named premier, stirring fears of further violence as Al Qaeda and tribes accused security forces of favouring the insurgents.
With confusion reigning in rebel-controlled Sana'a, suspected militants with Al Qaeda, which has vowed to battle the rebels, killed 10 policemen in central Yemen.
President Abd Rabuh Mansur Hadi on Tuesday named his chief of staff Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak as the new prime minister, after a UN-brokered peace deal agreed on September 21, the day the Huthi rebels overran the capital unopposed.
The accord provided for a rebel withdrawal from Sana'a once a neutral premier was named, for their disarmament and for the political transition to be revitalised.
But the rebels swiftly condemned Bin Mubarak's appointment as against the "will of the nation" and "at the behest of outside forces", an apparent reference to US and Saudi influence.
"This decision has violated all the principles agreed upon by all parties," the rebels, officially known as Ansarullah, said in a statement yesterday. They said the move did not reflect a Yemeni agreement "as much as it was a foreign decision".
Five candidates had been shortlisted out of 21 candidates, before Hadi reduced the number to three during a meeting with seven advisers, including a rebel representative who left the gathering in protest. A Hadi aide accused the rebels of rejecting the decision because "they do not want to keep their commitments" under the peace deal.
Since swooping on Sana'a, the rebels have been continuously tightening their grip on the city while also looking to expand their control eastwards to oilfields and to the strategic southwestern strait of Bab El Mandab. Foes of the Huthi rebels accuse them of taking orders from Iran and rejecting Bin Mubarak because of his political past as a student at Baghdad University, where he was in Saddam Hussein's Baath party.
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