ZINJIBAR, Yemen, May 30 (UPI) -- Islamist militants controlled a second southern Yemeni town Monday amid claims President Ali Abdullah Saleh let the town go to prove he needed to stay in power.
The fall of coastal Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province, to self-styled holy warriors over the weekend came as Saleh's embattled government announced it had struck a cease-fire deal with tribal rivals in the capital, Sanaa.
Officials described the truce as tenuous, and gunfire and shelling were heard in the capital late Sunday night, The New York Times reported.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of other cities across Yemen Sunday, as they have for months, demanding Saleh's ouster.
During the largest demonstration, in the central city of Taiz, in the Yemeni Highlands near the Red Sea port of Mocha, famous as a coffee marketplace, security forces fired at protesters from a government building, killing at least four people, witnesses said.
Taiz protesters told the Times plainclothes men early Monday set their tents on fire and destroyed other tents with bulldozers.
Zinjibar residents said their town fell quickly and easily to several hundred militants because most of the military abandoned the town Friday.
It was not immediately clear if they had been ordered to do so.
Former Defense Minister Abdullah Ali Eliwa accused Saleh of ordering his forces "to hand over Zinjibar" to the militants to "frighten people that if he goes, Yemen will become Somalia."
In a statement, he called for army units to join in the struggle to oust Saleh.
It was unclear Monday if the Islamists controlling Zinjibar were tied to the militant al-Qaida organization. It was also not clear if the militants who took over the town of Jaar in March are tied to al-Qaida.
Residents told The Wall Street Journal the Islamists were part of a group called Ansar al-Shariah, or Supporters of Islamic Law, and wanted to set up a fundamentalist Islamic emirate in the south, like the Taliban did in Afghanistan.
A number of other separatist groups also exist in the area, including the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, responsible for kidnapping 16 foreign tourists in December 1998 and believed to be involved in the Oct. 12, 2000, USS Cole bombing in Aden.
Washington until recently backed Saleh as an ally in the fight against al-Qaida, whose Yemeni branch is considered a major terrorist threat against the United States and Europe.
