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Mass escape from Yemen jail after blast

02 April 2010 00:42 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. About 40 secessionists escaped from a jail in southern Yemen in the mayhem caused by a bomb blast on Thursday, a local official and southern media said, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
State media said six people were injured in the explosion but quoted an Interior Ministry security official as denying the mass escape reports as "rumors spread by certain media."
Recent months have seen increasingly violent clashes between separatists and security forces, and analysts say Yemen could face a sustained insurgency from southerners unless the government seriously addresses their grievances.
The local government official said around 40 prisoners escaped after the blast in the southern province of Dalea.
Witnesses and southern media said those who escaped from the police jail belonged to Yemen’s southern secessionist movement, which opposes the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
In 2006, 23 militants escaped from a jail in the capital Sanaa, enabling al Qaeda to revive its organization in the Arabian Peninsula country.
North and South Yemen united in 1990, but many in the south -- home to most of Yemen’s oil industry -- complain northerners have seized resources and discriminate against them.
Elsewhere in Yemen’s south, an activist was shot dead and three others were injured when security forces dispersed a protest in the town of Radfan in Lahej province, the local official and media reports said.
Western countries and neighboring Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, fear al Qaeda is exploiting instability in Yemen to launch attacks in the region and beyond.