Gunmen kill judge in Yemen’s Aden

Gunmen on a motorbike on Monday shoot dead a judge in Aden, in the latest attack in the city serving as the government’s temporary base.

Security forces, loyal to Yemen's President, man a checkpoint in the southern city of Aden on January 18, 2016, the day a judge is shot dead by gunmen and a day after a suicide bombing targeted Aden'sShow more

Aden // Gunmen on a motorbike on Monday shot dead a judge in Aden, in the latest attack in the city serving as the government’s temporary base.

The attackers opened fire at Abdulhadi Mohammed near his house in the Mansura district, killing the judge, a police official said, adding they managed to flee.

There has been a growing number of attacks and assassinations in Aden, the government’s temporary capital, by extremists targeting members of the security forces and government officials.

Al Qaeda and the rival ISIL group both have a presence in the city, where extremists occupy government buildings and are seen patrolling several districts and intimidating civilians.

Aden was rocked by months of fighting last year between pro-government forces and Shiite Houthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa in September 2014 before expanding southwards.

Loyalists backed by a Saudi-led coalition have regained control of Aden and four other southern provinces since July, but the rebels still hold Sanaa and have besieged the third city of Taez for months.

In Sanaa yesterday, security officials loyal to the Houthis said an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition targeted a building used by police in Sanaa, killing at least 26 people and wounding about 15.

The officials said he dead and wounded were policemen and Houthi rebels. Some 30 more people were believed to be still trapped under the debris of the badly damaged building in the city centre.

Security forces swiftly sealed off the area as earth-moving equipment arrived to help with the search for bodies and survivors under the debris. The

Police vehicles parked in the facility’s courtyard were destroyed and nearby homes suffered some damage.

The targeted building was partially used as a gathering point for security forces and on occasion used by the Houthis as an assembly point for forces headed to deployment elsewhere in Yemen.

The Saudi-led coalition began airstrikes against the Houthis and their allies in March 2015, siding with the internationally recognised government.

Meanwhile, the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), a Nairobi-based humanitarian news agency, has announced the death of one of its contributors in Yemen. In a statement, it said 35-year-old Almigdad Mohammed Ali Mojalli was killed Sunday just outside Sanaa in an “apparent” airstrike.

Mojalli also contributed from Yemen to Western media outlets, including Voice of America and Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, said the statement.

The fighting in Yemen has, since last March, killed more than 5,800 people.

*Agencies