Yemeni prime minister to return to Sanaa after palace attack

Yemeni prime minister to return to Sanaa after palace attack

2011-08-24 02:59:04 GMT+7 (ICT)

SANAA (BNO NEWS) -- Yemeni Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mujawar is due to return from Saudi Arabia to Sanaa on Tuesday, more than two months after he was wounded in a bomb attack on the presidential palace.

Mujawar was wounded along with President Ali Abdullah Saleh and many other high-ranking officials in the attack on June 3. He is the first official to return to Sanaa after he recovered in a hospital in Riyadh, Xinhua news agency reported citing local sources.

On Monday, the Yemeni government announced that speaker of the country's Upper House of Parliament Abdulaziz Abdulghani died in Saudi Arabia of injuries he sustained in the bomb attack. The government declared a three-day mourning period.

Saleh, 69, was wounded along with other government officials in the bomb attack which hit the mosque of the presidential palace in Sanaa. They were hospitalized in Riyadh for treatment the following day.

Protesters have continually demanded the resignation of government leaders and President Saleh, who has ruled the country for 32 years. Violence has continued to escalate after Saleh threatened with civil war after refusing, for the third time, to sign a power transfer deal brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council on May 22.

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