SANAA - A Yemeni court on Saturday sentenced eight Shiite Zaidi rebels to death and 13 others to between five and 12 years in jail over deadly clashes near the capital that killed hundreds of people in 2008.The court cleared two people on "health grounds" and ordered that they be admitted to a psychological rehabilitation centre.
This brings to 34 the number of rebels condemned over "belonging to an armed group and carrying out a terrorist criminal plot that resulted in the death of many soldiers and citizens."
Those convicted on Saturday belonged to a group of 190 rebels who are being tried in batches over fighting that raged in Bani Hoshaish, just outside Sanaa, between March and June 2008.
In August of this year, the army launched an offensive against the rebels in the mountainous north that is aimed at eradicating them.
There are no independent accounts of the casualties but the rebels, also known as Huthis, say dozens of people were killed and wounded in the recent fighting.
Government forces and Huthi insurgents, named after their late commander, Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi, have been entangled in battles on and off since the rebellion erupted in 2004.
Thousands were killed and tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes.
Yemeni authorities accuse the rebels of being supported by groups in Iran and of seeking to reinstate a form of clerical rule that ended in a republican coup in 1962. The rebels deny both claims.
An offshoot of Shiite Islam, Zaidis are a minority in mainly Sunni Yemen but form the majority in the north.