Murder in Yemen’s Hamdan Leads to Tribal Revolt against Houthis

Members of the Popular Resistance Committee ride a truck as they secure a street during clashes with Houthi militants. (Reuters file photo)
Members of the Popular Resistance Committee ride a truck as they secure a street during clashes with Houthi militants. (Reuters file photo)
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Murder in Yemen’s Hamdan Leads to Tribal Revolt against Houthis

Members of the Popular Resistance Committee ride a truck as they secure a street during clashes with Houthi militants. (Reuters file photo)
Members of the Popular Resistance Committee ride a truck as they secure a street during clashes with Houthi militants. (Reuters file photo)

The al-Hattab tribe in the Hamdan region north of the Yemeni capital Sanaa revolted against the Iran-backed Houthi militias after they murdered one of the locals.

Local sources and witnesses told Asharq Al-Awsat that the militias raided a wedding in Hamdan under the pretense of cracking down on guests who had fired gunshots into the air in celebration.

The Houthis promptly arrested the groom, identified as Amer Ali Hadi al-Hattabi, and his father, before the situation escalated and left the groom dead at one of the Houthi-controlled police stations in the Darwan region.

His death sparked clashes between the residents of the Hattab village with the Houthis.

The sources said that two Houthis and four villagers were killed, amid tribal pleas in Hamdan for assistance in putting an end to the militia aggression.

Abdulwahhab Qatran, a judge who had defected from the Houthis, said that this was the third time since the Houthis captured Sanaa in 2014 that clashes erupt between them and the Hattab locals.

The locals refuse to yield to the militias’ authority.

The Houthis killed the groom after he was taken to the Darwan police station, said the Hamdan native in a Facebook post. The Hattab tribe members killed a Houthi militant in retaliation.

Local sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the situation in Hamdan was set to escalate after many local elders said that the clashes will rage on as long as the militias continued their oppressive practices.

The Houthis had previously banned any forms of celebration at weddings, saying that even music could not be played at those events. It has stormed many weddings in an attempt to uphold its orders.



UN: More Than One Million Syrians Returned to Their Homes Since Assad’s Fall 

A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)
A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)
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UN: More Than One Million Syrians Returned to Their Homes Since Assad’s Fall 

A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)
A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)

More than one million people have returned to their homes in Syria after the overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad on Dec. 8, including 800,000 people displaced inside the country and 280,000 refugees who came back from abroad, the UN said on Tuesday.

“Since the fall of the regime in Syria, we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote on the X social media platform.

“Early recovery efforts must be bolder and faster, though otherwise people will leave again: this is now urgent!” he said.

Last January, the UN's high commissioner for refugees urged the international community to back Syria's reconstruction efforts to facilitate the return of millions of refugees.

“Lift the sanctions, open up space for reconstruction. If we don't do it now at the beginning of the transition, we waste a lot of time,” Grandi told a press conference in Ankara, after returning from a trip in Lebanon and Syria.

At a meeting in mid-February, some 20 countries, including Arab nations, Türkiye, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan agreed at the close of a conference in Paris to “work together to ensure the success of the transition in a process led by Syria.”

The meeting's final statement also pledged support for Syria's new authorities in the fight against “all forms of terrorism and extremism.”

Meanwhile, AFP reported on Tuesday that displaced people are returning to their neighborhoods in Homs, where rebels first took up arms to fight Assad's crackdown on protests in 2011, only to find them in ruins.

In Homs, the Syrian military had besieged and bombarded opposition areas such as Baba Amr, where US journalist Marie Colvin was killed in a bombing in 2012.

“The house is burned down, there are no windows, no electricity,” said Duaa Turki at her dilapidated home in Khaldiyeh neighborhood.

“We removed the rubble, laid a carpet” and moved in, said the 30-year-old mother of four.

“Despite the destruction, we're happy to be back. This is our neighborhood and our land.”

Duaa’s husband spends his days looking for a job, she said, while they hope humanitarian workers begin distributing aid to help the family survive.