More flee from Aden

FOREIGNERS gathered in the besieged southern stronghold of Aden yesterday to await evacuation by sea as northern forces kept up an artillery attack on the city, Kuwait's state- run news agency reported.

Aden's besieged half million people hunted for scarce water as the shells fell on the southern bastion, and Yemen's rival northern and southern armies battled at its approaches.

Lack of clean water shut Aden's bakeries, adding a bread shortage to the misery in the city. Thousands of people queued at wells for inevitably polluted water.

Thousands of foreigners escaped Yemen's civil war soon after it erupted on 4 May, with a number of governments, including those of the United States and Britain, organising special evacuation flights. Others fled by boat across the Red Sea to Djibouti.

Thousands of Yemenis are believed to have died in the fighting. Aden lacks food, water, fuel and electric power.

The war erupted after a rift between northern President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his vice- president, Ali Salem al-Beidh, leader of the breakaway south. Beidh announced the south's secession on 20 May, breaking afour-year-old union.

Eight ceasefires have collapsed within hours of their start. UN efforts to mediate a truce continued. AP