Senior Yemeni officer assassinated by masked gunmen
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E-mail Xinhua, November 19, 2017
ADEN, Yemen, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- Unknown gunmen riding a motorcycle opened fire and killed a senior officer of Yemen's armed forces in the southeastern province of Hadramout on Sunday, a security official told Xinhua.
"A senior officer of the military forces was assassinated by masked gunmen after he finished his prayers and came out from a mosque in Hadramout's historic city of Shibam," the local security source said on condition of anonymity.
The assassinated officer was identified as Rabey Jarwan and was working with the newly-recruited army forces in Hadramout, the security source said.
He added that Jarwan was responsible for the training and recruitment administration of the new troops backed by the United Arab Emirates in the province.
After conducting the drive-by shooting, the masked assassins managed to flee to unknown locations, according to the source.
No one has claimed responsibility for assassinating the officer, but Yemeni security officials accused gunmen linked to the Islamic State terrorist group of being behind such drive-by shootings in Hadramout.
Militants of the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch and the Islamic State group (IS) are more active in the country's southeastern part and in recent weeks Yemeni armed forces supported by the UAE started waging large offensives against some hideouts there.
The al-Qaida and Islamic State-linked terrorists took advantage of the security vacuum and ongoing civil war to expand their influence and seize more territories in Yemen.
Security in Yemen has further deteriorated since March 2015, when war broke out between the Shiite Houthi group, supported by former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and government forces backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition.
UN statistics show more than 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed since the coalition intervened in the Yemeni civil war that also displaced around three million.
The impoverished Arab country is also suffering the world's largest cholera epidemic since April, with about 5,000 cases reported every day. Enditem
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