Saleh calls on Yemen govt to resign

Saleh waves to supporters during a ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the General People’s Congress party in Sanaa yesterday. Yemen’s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh called yesterday for the resignation of the country’s coalition government, local media reported. Independent news site Mareb Press reported Saleh as saying that the government - formed under the internationally-backed transition deal that saw Saleh step down in February - was failing to restore security in the country. Saleh, making a rare public speech at a rally marking the 30th anniversary of the General People’s Congress (GPC) party which he founded, insisted that he would remain leader of the party. There have been calls for Saleh to step down from the leadership of the GPC and make way for President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who is currently one of the party’s vice presidents. Many of the opposition forces who took to the streets in 2011 to call for Saleh’s ouster accuse him of continuing to obstruct the country’s transition process behind the scenes. l Ten civilians including a 10-year-old girl were killed in a Yemeni government air strike that had apparently missed its intended target, a car carrying Islamist militants, tribal officials and residents there said yesterday. The missile attack in a mountainous area in the centre of the country on Sunday prompted angry protests by relatives of the victims, residents said. Officials initially said a US drone had killed five people in the attack on Sunday evening. But residents said yesterday a Yemeni warplane had hit a car, killing 10 people, including a 40-year-old woman and her 10-year-old daughter. “It seems Yemeni warplanes missed the vehicle carrying the suspected militants and instead hit one carrying civilians, who were killed while four were injured,” an official from a clan in the mountainous Radaa region said. “The car that carried the Al Qaeda militants happened to pass in the same place where the civilian car was,” he added. Families of the victims marched on Sunday evening in protest against the deaths, a witness said. The incident could fuel already growing resentment over a US-Yemeni campaign against militants that has often claimed civilian lives.