SANAA, Yemen — On Feb. 23, President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi appointed Mohammed Ali Yasser the governor of Mahra province, in southeastern Yemen, a week after armed tribesmen ambushed a convoy of Saudi-led Arab coalition forces on the road leading to the Shahin crossing with Oman. According to a Feb. 17 statement from the Mahra local authority, officials were still pursuing the perpetrators. The tribes object to the Saudi military presence in the area and fear that the Saudis want to displace Mahra's population and annex the territory.
Tribal leader Ali al-Hurayzi, the former deputy governor of Mahra, accused the Saudi forces of trying to seize and close the Shahin crossing, which he said “operates naturally according to [its own] laws and regulations.”
