People walk past electoral posters of far right National Front party regional leader for southern France, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, left
French voters were casting ballots yesterday for regional leaders in an unusually tense security climate, expected to favor conservative and far right candidates and strike a new blow against the governing Socialists.
Islamic State-inspired attacks on Paris Nov. 13 and a Europe-wide migrant crisis this year have shaken up France’s political landscape.
Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Front is hoping the two-round voting that starts yesterday will consolidate political gains she has made in recent years — and strengthen its legitimacy as she prepares to seek the presidency in 2017.
The unpopular Socialist president, Francois Hollande, has seen his approval ratings jump since the Paris attacks, as he intensified French airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq and ordered a state of emergency at home. But his party, which currently runs nearly all of France’s regions, has seen its electoral support shrivel in recent years amid economic disappointment.
Voters are choosing leadership for the country’s 13 newly redrawn regions in elections that started yesterday and go to a second round Dec. 13.
Le Pen is campaigning to run the northern Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, which includes the port city of Calais, a flashpoint in Europe’s migrant drama. Polls suggest she could win.
Her young niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, appears to be on even stronger footing in her race to lead the southern Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region, including the French Riviera and part of the Alps. AP
Yemen | IS-claimed bombing kills governor, 6 guards in Aden
A huge explosion killed the governor of Yemen’s southern Aden province and six of his bodyguards yesterday, security officials said, in an attack that was later claimed by a local Islamic State affiliate.
Gov. Gaafar Mohamed Saad was traveling to his office when the explosion struck his convoy in the southern port city. Authorities are investigating the exact cause of the explosion. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
An IS affiliate claimed the attack in a statement circulated online by supporters, saying the bomb was concealed in a parked car along the convoy’s route. The group referred to Saad as a “tyrant” and warned the “heads of the infidels” in Yemen that it would carry out “operations to chop off their rotten heads.”
IS has claimed a series of bombings that killed 159 people and wounded 345 this year in Yemen, according to an AP count.
The extremists have been able to expand their reach in the chaos of Yemen’s larger conflict, between a loose array of pro-government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition and Shiite Houthi rebels, who control the capital, Sana’a, and large parts of northern Yemen. Pro-government forces drove the Houthis out of Aden earlier this year. Ahmed Al-Haj, Sana’a, AP
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