Army shelling kills 16, including 3 kids, in south Yemen

At least sixteen people have been killed and more than a dozen wounded in an army tank shelling in Yemen’s southwestern province of Ad Dali’.

The incident occurred on Friday when a Yemeni army tank fired at a funeral tent with medics and witnesses saying that 15 others were also wounded in the attack.

Witnesses claimed the troops fired more shells as people tried to evacuate the injured.

The tent was reportedly set up by the separatist Southern Movement, which has been campaigning for autonomy or outright secession for the country’s formerly independent south.

The mourners had gathered to offer their condolences over the death of a man killed during clashes with security forces on Monday.

The clashes broke out when southern secessionists attempted to storm the governorate building to raise a flag of the former South Yemen. Three people, including two Yemeni police officers, were killed in a gunfight that followed.

South Yemen was an independent state until it was united with the North in 1990.

Violence has intensified in southern Yemen amid growing anti-government sentiments triggered by the killing of a local chief and his bodyguards at a checkpoint earlier this month.