SAN’A, Yemen – Yemen’s injured president accepted an offer from the Saudi king to travel there for medical treatment for burns and wounds from a splintered pulpit blown apart in a opposition rocket attack, but had not yet left San’a, the capital, by Saturday night.
A flurry of conflicting reports about President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s whereabouts and condition spread through the Middle East late Saturday after Yemeni government officials and opposition tribal leaders reported that Saudi King Abdullah had mediated a cease-fire in the raging conflict in Yemen.
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Abdullah intervened to tamp down what has become an all-out military conflict on his southern border. The capital and other areas of Yemen grew quiet for the first time in days after dawn Saturday.
For months, Saleh has defied intense international pressure, including from longtime ally Washington, to step down. Should he leave the country at this point, he might never return, given that large segments of the population and a powerful tribal alliance would try to engineer his ouster in absentia.
The extent of Saleh’s injuries has been a matter of intense speculation. When the rocket struck the mosque in his presidential compound, he was surrounded by top officials and his bodyguards. Eleven guards died, and five of the officials who were standing next to the president were seriously wounded and taken to Saudi Arabia.
The president delivered an audio address, but the images shown on Yemeni television Friday after the attack were old.
Abdullah waded into the conflict after nearly four months of largely peaceful protests seeking to depose Saleh spun out of control into a bloody civil conflict. Past cease-fires have not held, and international diplomacy has so far failed to oust Yemen’s leader of 33 years.
Sheik Mohammed Nagi al-Shayef, a leader of the Saleh-allied Bakeel tribe, said he met with the president Saturday evening at the Defense Ministry compound in the capital.
“He suffered burns, but they were not serious. He was burned on both hands, his face and head,” al-Shayef said.
He said Saleh also was hit by jagged pieces of wood that splintered from the mosque pulpit.
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