Yemen’s chaos deepens after rebels killed ex president Saleh

FILE: Ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh (Photo By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0)

SANAA, Yemen — The killing of Yemen’s ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh by the country’s Shiite rebels as their alliance crumbled has thrown the nearly three-year civil war into unpredictable new chaos.

A video circulating online on Monday showed Saleh’s body with a gaping head wound dumped in a pickup truck by rebels — a grisly end recalling that of longtime strongman Saleh’s contemporary, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, in 2011.

Saleh’s slaying likely gives the rebels the upper hand in the days-long fighting for the country’s capital, Sanaa.

It also shatters hopes by Yemen’s Saudi-backed government that Saleh’s recent split with the Iranian-backed rebels, known as Houthis, would have weakened them and given the government and the Saudi coalition backing a chance for a turning point in the stalemated war that has brought humanitarian disaster.