Envoy says Saleh stable; Sanaa ceasefire holds

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is in good health after an operation for injuries sustained in a rocket attack,and is unlikely to undergo further surgery.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is in good health after an operation for injuries sustained in a rocket attack,and is unlikely to undergo further surgery,a Yemeni diplomat in Riyadh said on Wednesday.

Saleh,69,was wounded on Friday when rockets struck his Sanaa palace,killing seven people and wounding senior officials and advisers in what his officials said was an assassination attempt. He is being treated in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

Saleh was initially said to have received a shrapnel wound,and his vice president was quoted on Monday as saying the president would return to Yemen within days.

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Yemeni and US officials said on Tuesday that Saleh was in a more serious condition,with burns over roughly 40 per cent of his body.

But a senior Yemeni diplomat in Saudi Arabia said Saleh was improving and a further operation was not seen as necessary at this stage.

I visited him yesterday evening and he was good. He talked to us and asked about the Yemeni expatriates and he is better than the others who were injured. He is very good and talks. He was sitting on a chair, said Taha al-Hemyari,head of Yemeni Community Affairs at the Riyadh embassy.

Maybe within the next hours the supervising doctor will release a statement about his condition. Saudi newspaper al-Watan cited diplomatic sources saying another operation on Saleh was still possible.

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In the capital Sanaa,a ceasefire was holding between government forces loyal to Saleh and tribesman of Sheikh Sadeq al-Ahmar of the powerful Hashed tribe,who have turned against their former ally. Over 200 people were killed and thousands fled in two weeks of fighting.