Suicide Bomber Kills Yemen Pro-army Militia Chief

A suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber blew himself up early Sunday in southern Yemen killing the commander of a local pro-army militia and wounding six people, a government official told Agence France Presse.

Two children were among the wounded in the town of Mudiya in the restive southern province of Abyan, the official said.

"An Al-Qaida suicide bomber managed to enter a home used as a base by the Popular Resistance Committees and activated an explosives belt killing the local commander Nasser Ali Mansur and wounding six," he said.

The committees have recently become a target for al-Qaida militants who were forced to flee Abyan in June following battles led by the army, with the local militiamen backing them up.

A doctor in Aden told AFP he had helped evacuate three of the wounded from a hospital in the Abyan city of Loden to a bigger facility in Aden "because they are in critical condition."

The attack came hours after suspected al-Qaida militants killed 19 soldiers in a rocket attack and suicide bombing on Saturday that targeted intelligence headquarters in Aden, the main southern city in Yemen.

Also Sunday, an official told AFP that Yemeni authorities have freed a leading southern separatist days after he was arrested on his arrival in Aden after spending several years in self-imposed exile.

Former ambassador Ahmed al-Hassani, who has lived in Britain since 2006 as a political refugee, was arrested at dawn on Wednesday at the airport after arriving on-board a flight from Beirut.

Hassani was freed overnight Saturday on the express orders of President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, the official said.

Hassani is the secretary general of the Southern Democratic Assembly.