Fresh battles reported in Sanaa

NEW: New fighting reported near the home of the leader of a tribal revoltNEW: Protesters fired on in Change Square, witnesses report NEW: The headquarters of Yemen's national airline has been set ablaze, witnesses sayNEW: A government spokesman says victory is near; tribal official dismisses the claim

(CNN) -- Government troops fought fresh battles with opposition fighters in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, early Friday as the country's embattled president tried to put down a tribal revolt.

Troops backed by tanks were nearing the home of tribal leader Sadeq Al-Ahmar, whose followers have been battling troops loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh for nearly two weeks, witnesses reported. The nearby headquarters of Yemen's national airline was ablaze, with surrounding houses catching fire as well, witnesses said.

Government spokesman Abdu Ganadi told CNN said Saleh's forces "are near victory." But Abdulqawi Al-Qaisi, a spokesman for Al-Ahmar, said "All government claims of victory are fabricated, and our forces are still on the ground."

And in Change Square, where tens of thousands of anti-government protesters have made camp, witnesses said gunmen on surrounding streets were firing into the crowd, while snipers were visible on nearby rooftops.

"It's very tense inside Change Square now, because there is a fear that government forces might attempt to come into Change Square and take it over at any time," one of the protesters, who asked to remain anonymous due to security concerns, told CNN. A nearby resident said the fighting had subsided after midnight, however.

"We're still hearing bombs and gunfire, but not as much as we were just an hour ago," the resident said.

The fighting erupted May 23, after Saleh balked at a deal negotiated by Persian Gulf states that would have eased him from office in 30 days. The intensity of the fighting in the capital, where most of Yemen's security forces and army units are based, has increased fears that the country is on the verge of civil war.

Saleh has ruled Yemen since 1978, and the nation has been a key U.S. ally in the battle against the al Qaeda terrorist network. But Yemen was caught up in the wave of protests that swept the Arab world after the January ouster of Tunisia's longtime strongman, leaving Saleh battling both peaceful and violent resistance movements.

The impoverished, arid and mountainous nation has a weak central government and contains vast stretches where tribal law reigns supreme. A fresh group of about 1,000 armed tribesmen were seen entering Sanaa early Thursday, Sanaa resident Nageeb Mujaili said.

"We asked them why they were going to Sanaa armed," said Mujaili. "And they said to support their leader, Sheikh Sadeq Al-Ahmar."

Yemeni state television reported that government forces had beaten back tribal fighters from areas of the capital near the Ministry of Tourism building on Thursday, and Sanaa residents reported hearing explosions near the presidential palace, a government source said.

"The reason the street fighting in Sanaa has gotten a lot more intense in the past several hours is because special forces are now involved," said the source, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the news media.

"The special forces of the Republican Guard, the elite units, got involved on Wednesday. They're being used because the government wants to minimize collateral damage and the special forces have particular training in clearing fighters from buildings."

A security official at Sanaa International Airport said inbound and outbound flights were halted due because of security concerns over clashes near the airport. But the official, who is not authorized to speak to the media, said that the airport itself is not closed.

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29 dead, 700 flee as gang battles hit west Mexico (AP)

MORELIA, Mexico – A gunbattle between rival drug gangs in western Mexico left 29 bullet-ridden bodies in fake military uniforms heaped across a roadway and inside bullet-riddled vehicles in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, the army said Thursday.

The bodies, all male, were found Wednesday scattered around 14 shot-up pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, two of which had bulletproofing.

Television images of the scene near the town of Ruiz showed what appeared to have been a convoy of cartel vehicles that was ambushed or engaged by another column of gunmen on a stretch of rural highway. Military-style boots, bulletproof vests, hand grenades and thousands of rounds of ammunition were found at the scene.

Federal and state officials gave conflicting reports on the incident.

Nayarit state police said officers responding to reports of a kidnapping found four wounded men at the scene of the shootout. One injured person died later, and three remain at the hospital, Nayarit officials said.

The army said two suspects wounded in the battle were found at the scene. It was unclear if the two reported by the army were included in, or additional to, the state figure.

The army said in a statement that around the same time Wednesday, soldiers engaged in a shootout with armed suspects in a town about 35 miles (60 kilometers) north of Ruiz. Two suspects — a man and a woman — were killed in that confrontation. The military statement did not say whether the two shootouts were related.

Nayarit's attorney general Oscar Herrera told a radio station that preliminary reports indicated the two gangs involved in the fierce highway battle were the Sinaloa and the Zetas drug cartels. He said one of the two cartels kidnapped a man of the rival gang, which resulted in a car chase and subsequent gunfight.

Nayarit and the nearby states of Michoacan and Zacatecas have become battlegrounds for drug cartels fighting for control of the area.

The Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's most powerful, has long been active in Nayarit, which borders its home base in Sinaloa state, but the gang has recently been challenged by the Zetas and by remnants of the Beltran Leyva cartel.

In Michoacan, officials said more than 700 people fled their villages amid fighting between rival drug traffickers, which appeared to be unrelated to the Nayarit conflict.

Michoacan state Civil Defense Director Carlos Mandujano said Wednesday that the villagers were given refuge at five shelters.

It is at least the second time a large number of rural residents have been displaced by drug violence in Mexico. In November, about 400 people in the northern border town of Ciudad Mier took refuge in the neighboring city of Ciudad Aleman following cartel gunbattles. That shelter has since been closed and most have returned to their homes.

Mandujano said the villagers spent Tuesday night at a primitive water park in the town of Buenavista Tomatlan, with most sleeping under open thatched-roof structures.

Mandujano said state authorities were providing sleeping mats, blankets and food for those in the shelter.

Residents told local authorities that gunbattles between rival drug cartel factions had made it too dangerous for them to stay in outlying hamlets. The latest reports said arsonists were burning avocado farms in the nearby town of Acahuato.

"We woke up with fear (on Monday), but things appeared to have quieted down. It wasn't until later that morning that we saw SUVs with armed men driving by very fast and shooting at each other," said a woman who did not want to be named for security reasons.

Several displaced people said they would stay at the shelters all week before considering going back to their villages.

"I am not scared, but my children are," said a mother, who asked not to be quoted by name because of fear of retaliation.

The fighting in Michoacan is believed to involve rival factions of the Michoacan-based La Familia drug cartel, some of whose members now call themselves "The Knights Templar."

Mexico still has fewer people displaced by violence than countries like Colombia, according to the Norway-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, which tracks such figures. It estimates about 230,000 people in Mexico have been driven from their homes, often to stay with relatives or in the United States. An estimated 3.6 million to 5.2 million people have been displaced by decades of drug- and guerrilla-war violence in Colombia.

Buenavista police chief Othoniel Montes Herrera said he has neither the manpower nor the armament to patrol rural areas frequented by drug gangs. Sending ill-armed officers out there "would be certain death, and we're not thinking of putting our personnel at that risk."

Drug violence has been on the rise in Nayarit, a Pacific Coast state known for its surfing and beach towns. In October, gunmen killed 15 people at a car wash in the capital of Tepic, an attack that police said bore the characteristics of organized crime. The bodies of 12 murder victims, eight of them partially burned, were found on a Nayarit dirt road a year ago. Officials have not identified the gangs fighting there.

And in Durango state, which borders Nayarit to the north, authorities have been excavating dozens of corpses from mass burial grounds used by drug cartel killers.

On Thursday, state police reported that two more bodies had been found in the latest excavation, bringing the total of bodies found at a seven lots in the state capital to 223.

___

Associated Press writer Adriana Gomez Licon in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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U.S. Army battles to control Mississippi

New Orleans (CNN) -- Waging war against flooding of historic proportions that has already affected thousands of people in eight Midwestern and Southern states, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened a spillway Monday north of New Orleans in an effort to calm the rising Mississippi River.

A crowd gathered near the entrance to the Bonnet Carre spillway to watch workers using cranes slide open the gates to the flood control system, which was built beginning in 1929 after a devastating flood two years before. The spillway, like another that could be opened next week, is designed to divert floodwater away from New Orleans and slow the raging river to protect the low-lying city.

While the river's highest levels may still be days away, a decision to open the second flood control structure -- the Morganza Spillway -- may not be, Gov. Bobby Jindal said. People with property that would flood if the spillway is opened should not dally, Jindal warned.

"My advice to our people is not to wait, to get prepared now," Jindal said.

Time magazine photos: Floodwaters rise along Mississippi

Upstream in Memphis, Tennessee, residents and authorities had prepared all they could Monday as they anxiously waited for the Mississippi to crest Tuesday morning at a near-record 14 feet above flood stage.

"It's sort of torturous, we've been waiting so long. It's hard keeping peoples' attention. It's warning fatigue, if you will," Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton Jr. said. "But we're ready for it."

Water levels on the Mississippi

The river is the highest it's been at Memphis since 1937, when it crested at 48.7 feet -- 14.7 feet above flood stage. That flood killed 500 people and inundated 20 million acres of land, said Col. Vernie Reichling, the Corps' Memphis District commander.

The river Monday covered the lowest parts of the city's historic Beale Street and had forced about 400 people from their homes, Wharton said. Another 1,300 remained in low-lying areas, he said.

While Corps' officials said it appeared levees protecting the area were holding up well, with only minor amounts of water seeping in from beneath or lapping over from above, local officials were taking no chances.

"It's a very powerful river. It looks like it's running very slowly, but it has a very strong current," said Bob Nations, director of preparedness in Shelby County, Tennessee, which includes Memphis. "We still don't know (exactly what) the river might do."

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Nicholas Pegues, an East Memphis resident who lives near the Wolf River, said he's seen extensive flooding and homes left uninhabitable by the water as he's traveled through the region.

"It's affecting daily life tremendously," said Pegues, a Shelby County elections' division employee who submitted photos of the flooding to CNN iReport. "It is pretty severe downtown. ... I know a lot of ... people have lost their homes."

iReport: Flooding in downtown Memphis

The flooding also hit sections of southwest Memphis, along the Nonconnah Creek.

"It's just bad," James Black told CNN affiliate WREG-TV in Memphis. "Like I say, it's an act of God. What can you do in an act of God?"

Wharton, the city's mayor, said the flooding had not yet caused major disruptions in the city, and he did not expect it to, even though National Weather Service meteorologist Bill Borghoff said it is possible the river won't fall below flood stage at Memphis until June.

Memphis businesses prepare for flooding

That's the problem in Missouri and southern Illinois, where flooding continues even though the Mississippi and Ohio river crests have moved south.

In Murphysboro, Illinois, CNN iReporter Robert Icenogle said a swollen creek is inundating a church and band shell, while threatening to wash out telephone poles.

"We cannot get to the park, which is underwater, or to other towns," he said. "Most of the roads are closed, plus the water sewage plant is getting sandbagged."

"(If) the sewage plant shuts down, we won't have tap water to bathe in or drink," he added.

Final levee breach completed in plan to stem flooding

Last week, the Corps intentionally breached a levee in Missouri as part of its effort to reduce the pressure on other levees, flooding 130,000 acres of agricultural land over the objection of state officials and some farmers.

"I'm very sad. I look at that and I don't have a home," Marilynn Nally said, pointing to her flooded family farm. "I feel like we're having to suffer for somebody else."

About 25 miles away in Metropolis, Illinois, Eloise Burton mourned the loss of her home.

"It's sad to think about all these years, we've lost everything," she told CNN affiliate WPSD-TV in Paducah, Kentucky, on Sunday.

As the floodwaters worked their way south, the operator of the nuclear plant in Port Gibson, Mississippi, expressed concerns that rising water could cut off an access road to the facility.

However, there was no plan to shut down the Grand Gulf Nuclear Power Station and no immediate cause for concern, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Agency said Monday.

In Louisiana, where the river's crest is not expected to begin arriving until next week, Jindal added bears to the list of things residents need to think about. He said flooding could force some of the state's ursine residents from their homes and into populated areas.

So far, 21 parishes have issued emergency declarations ahead of expected flooding, Jindal said.

He said 400 National Guard troops would be active by the end of the day Monday helping prepare for the flood.

The Corps' decision to open the Bonnet Carre spillway was part of its overall plan to reduce pressure on the levee system and lower river levels to lessen the threat to low-lying New Orleans and other southern Louisiana communities.

The spillway opened on Monday diverts water from the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico by way of Lake Pontchartrain.

But the Corps was also considering opening the Morganza Spillway, a move that would flood populated areas and could put Morgan City, Louisiana, and other communities at risk. Fleming said he had formally requested authority to open the spillway, and Jindal said that approval could come as soon as Monday afternoon.

Jindal said the Louisiana National Guard had asked for at least three days, but preferably five days, to evacuate those areas before the Corps opens the gates.

Even with opening the spillways, forecasters have predicted widespread flooding along the system designed to keep the high waters outside the New Orleans.

But even with a forecast for record or near-record crests into next week and weeks of high water to follow, Corps officials say they expect nothing like the widespread and devastating flooding that occurred along the southernmost stretch of the Mississippi River in 1927.

That flood began near Memphis in the fall of 1926 and did not end until the following August, according to a National Weather Service report on the disaster. It devastated the levee system and flooded 165 million acres of land, sweeping 600,000 people from their homes. It came at a cost of 246 lives and the equivalent of nearly $624 million in 2011 dollars.

As a result of that flood, the report says, Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1928. That prompted a massive public works programs to build a system of levees and other structures designed to hold back the river more effectively.

The latest flooding in the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys is largely the byproduct of torrential rains throughout the region. Over one two-week stretch, there was about 600% more precipitation than usual, Reichling said.

The weather now appears to be working in the flood fighters' favor.

Only minimal rain is expected over the coming days, with daytime temperatures forecast to be in the upper 80s and 90s through Thursday, at which point the water levels should begin to creep back down.

But the Corps isn't going to back down anytime soon in watching over its powerful and sometimes unruly charge.

"It's a historic time we're in all along the Mississippi River," Fleming said.

CNN's Greg Botelho, Marlena Baldacci, Phil Gast and Ben Smith contributed to this report.

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