SANA'A – Yemeni Shi'ite rebels denied an assassination attempt on an Interior Ministry official, which took place on Friday, only hours after a ceasefire agreement, Al-Jazeera television reported on Saturday. No further details of the assassination denial were given by the television station. Shi'ite rebels in Yemen said they had pulled out of an occupied airport in the north and were arranging to free their Saudi prisoners, in line with a truce agreed with Sanaa. “Today, we carried out our withdrawal from the perimeter of the airport of (the city of) Saada, where a plane will land for the first time" since August,” rebel spokesman Mohamed Abdel Salam told reporters. He said the insurgents also had began to dismantle roadblocks in the north and were on the verge of freeing Saudi prisoners captured in border clashes that began last November. Salam said measures were underway to hand over the Saudi prisoners to a mediator, Ali Nasser Kersha, a tribal official from the northern province of Saada. He did not say how many prisoners the rebels were holding, how many would be freed, nor the exact time or date of the expected release. Calm prevailed in the north yesterday, the second day of the shaky truce that broke into deadly violence hours after it went into effect late Thursday, both sides said. "The situation is calm on all fronts in Saada province, which straddles Saudi Arabia and is the centre of the six-year old rebellion,” said one military source. "But the calm is precarious," said another of the latest in a string of truces over the years that have broken down.
