Civilians return to militant zone in Yemen

At least 2,000 displaced Yemenis have returned home to a restive area in the country’s south that has been under the control of al-Qaida-linked militants for more than seven months.

Their return to Zinjibar, the provincial capital of Abyan province, provides some of the first civilian views of the Islamic rule the militants have begun to set up in the poorly governed hinterlands of the Arab world’s poorest country: a zone where armed men from a various Arab countries move about in new Toyota trucks and vow to implement strict Islamic law.