SANAA (Agencies)
A member of parliament from Yemen's ruling party was assassinated when gunmen ambushed his convoy in a volatile northern region where government forces are battling Zaydi rebels.
Saleh al-Hindi, a member of the ruling General People's Congress, was killed when the gunmen sprayed his car with bullets before escaping.
It was not clear who killed al-Hindi but the lawmaker is known to support government efforts to subdue rebels led by Abdul-Malik Houthi in the Saada province.
Hindi's son and another companion were also killed in the attack, according to tribal sources.
The slain lawmaker had been a member of the opposition southern-based Yemen Socialist Party (YSP) before shifting to President Ali Abdullah Saleh's party around eight years ago.
The on-off Zaidi insurgency has been waged by rebels known as "Huthis" after their late commander, Hussein Badr Eddin al-Houthi, who was killed by the army in September 2004.
Their aim is to restore the Zaidi imamate, which was overthrown in a 1962 republican coup in Yemen, one of the world's poorest countries.
The rebels reject Saleh's regime as illegitimate, although the president is himself a Zaidi.
Sunni Muslims make up the majority of Yemen's 19 million population, while most of the rest are from the Zaydi sect of Shi'te Islam. |
