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Amnesty demands Yemen protect displaced civilians

by reuters | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Thursday, 23 September 2010 11:12 GMT

* Yemen says inhabitants were advised to evacuate

* Amnesty says high number of displaced "shocking"

SANAA, Sept 23 (Reuters) - A human rights groups accused the Yemeni military on Thursday of displacing "a shocking number of people" in preparation for a potentially disproportionate offensive against suspected al Qaeda fighters.

Yemen's Red Crescent said this week that up to 12,000 civilians had been forced to flee clashes between suspected al Qaeda militants and government forces in and around the town of al-Hota in the southern province of Shabwa. Amnesty International said that some inhabitants of al-Hota had told the rights watchdog that the suspected militants were in fact armed tribesmen with grievances against the government. "The nature of the assault may be -- for a law-enforcement operation -- grossly disproportionate," Amnesty said in a statement.

The Yemeni government has confirmed that civilians had been asked to move out of the area to avoid being caught up in military operations.

"Residents were advised to evacuate their homes to minimise collateral damage," a spokesman for the Yemeni embassy in Washington said in statement late on Wednesday.

The military assault on al-Hota was a response to a recent attempt by suspected militants to bomb a key gas pipeline running to an export point in Shabwa, the $4.5 billion Total-led <TOTF.PA> liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant that started production in October, it said.

Amnesty International urged the Yemeni government to protect those displaced by the fighting.

"Whatever the nature of the ongoing operations, the Yemeni authorities must ensure as a matter of urgency that what amounts to a shocking number of people displaced in the space of a few days are adequately provided for," Philip Luther, Amnesty International's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in the statement. (Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Additional reporting by Raissa Kasolowsky in Dubai; editing by Paul Taylor)

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