SANAA, Yemen (AP) — A spate of deadly drive-by shootings targeting Muslim clerics and preachers has sparked panic and fear in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden, prompting some imams to quit and abandon their mosques while dozens have fled the country.

The killings have also brought attention to a rivalry that has emerged in Aden as yet another layer to Yemen’s complex civil war.

Ali Othman al-Jilani, a top cleric in Yemen’s port city of Aden, was assassinated on Jan. 4, 2016 as he was walking out of his mosque in the city’s Crater district. (Yemen Ministry of Religious Endowment)

Since 2015, the conflict has pitted a Saudi-led coalition of mostly Arab states against the country’s Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen and its capital, Sanaa. The coalition is fighting to restore Yemen’s internationally recognized President Abed-Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power.

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