At least seven people were killed, including four policemen who clashed with a dissident army unit, as hundreds of thousands of anti-regime protesters rallied across Yemen yesterday.
“Police attacked an army checkpoint in Amran Province,” 170km north of Sana’a on Tuesday, “killing one officer and wounding two soldiers,” a military official said.
The four policemen died as the security forces traded fire with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, he said.
Photo: Reuters
The targeted army unit operates under the commander of Yemen’s northwest military region, General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who has sided with the protesters and accused regime supporters of trying to assassinate him, he said.
In the south of the country, soldiers yesterday shot dead two anti-regime protesters and wounded several others in different sectors of the port city of Aden, medics and witnesses said.
They said the army opened fire as protesters tried to set up roadblocks to enforce a general strike, which demonstrators have vowed to carry out in Aden every Saturday and Wednesday until the fall of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Protests swept provinces across Yemen yesterday in response to calls by the Youth for Change, a coalition of groups that has led anti-Saleh demonstrations since late January.
The largest rally was being held in the flashpoint city of Taez, south of Sana’a, where more than 20 people were killed in clashes with security forces earlier this month.
Yemen’s oil-rich Arab neighbors in the Gulf have urged Saleh, in power since 1978, to ensure a peaceful transition of power to Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi and a national unity government led by the opposition.
However, protesters have rejected the proposal, demanding the fall of Saleh’s entire regime and for the Yemeni strongman to stand trial rather than be granted immunity along with his powerful sons.
Saleh, for his part, has accepted in principle the initiative of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, but without spelling out clearly whether or when he would step down.
He has insisted on overseeing any transition, fearful of being dumped out of office like his ally, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted on Feb. 11 following mass demonstrations.
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