May 6, 2010 - Daily Star - Yemen Kidnapped Yemeni soldiers freed shooting in north

ADEN, Yemen: Yemeni separatist gunmen freed two soldiers kidnapped in the south to press for the release of two jailed southern leaders, officials said on Wednesday.
The officials, members of a local council in the area, said the soldiers were let go late on Tuesday after tribal mediators in the flashpoint province of Lahej secured a pledge from the government to resolve the issue of the prisoners, who were not released.
Yemen, also fighting a resurgent wing of Al-Qaeda, is trying to quell rising unrest in its south, where a separatist movement objects to the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Violence has swelled in recent months, with deaths on both sides.
The soldiers had been on leave in their hometown of Taizz and were returning to their barracks when they were seized on Saturday, the Defense Ministry said.
The kidnappers were reported to have set a 48-hour deadline for their demands.
Yemen has been the focus of Western security concerns following a string of attacks attributed to a Yemen-based arm of Al-Qaeda, including an attempted bombing of a US-bound plane and a suicide attack targeting the British ambassador to Sanaa.
Witnesses said that a gunman on a motorcycle shot dead a soldier on Monday in the southern Abyan Province, and security forces arrested four people suspected in the killing of another soldier in April.
North and south Yemen formally united in 1990 but many in the south, where most of impoverished Yemen’s oil facilities are located, complain northerners exploit the south’s resources and discriminate against southern citizens.
Separately, the Yemeni government accused Shiite rebels of shooting dead two shepherds in their tent in the northern Jawf province, breaching a February truce, the Defense Ministry’s online newspaper said.
The government said the rebels were engaged in score settling with those who sided with the state in the war. Rebels could not be reached for comment.
Sanaa sealed a truce deal in February with the rebels, who complain of discrimination by the government, bringing an end to the latest round of fighting in a conflict that has raged on and off since 2004 and displaced 250,000 people.