Deadly clashes erupted in the Yemeni capital yesterday, shattering a truce between loyalist troops and dissident tribesmen as security forces shot dead seven protesters in the second-largest city of Taez.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton voiced shock at the use of live rounds against protesters in Taez in a crackdown that the UN human rights office said had already killed more than 50 people since Sunday.
“I am shocked and condemn in the strongest terms the use of force and live ammunition against peaceful protesters in the city of Taez,” she said, adding: “The continued repression by the Yemeni regime and grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law cannot be accepted.”
Photo: Reuters
Fierce fighting erupted in the capital Sana’a before dawn between troops loyal to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and fighters loyal to the country’s most powerful tribal leader Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar, a correspondent said.
A plume of dark smoke rose into the sky over Ahmar’s compound in north Sana’a, witnesses said.
There were also heavy exchanges between his tribesmen and loyalist troops around the headquarters of the military police and the official Saba news agency, as well as in a major thoroughfare in the Yemeni capital, the correspondent said.
Three of Ahmar’s fighters were killed in the clashes, a medic said. There was no immediate word of any casualties on the loyalist side.
Saleh’s government accused Ahmar’s fighters of breaking the truce, which the tribal chief announced on Friday after four days of ferocious clashes.
The defense ministry’s Web site said that his tribesmen had seized both the headquarters of the ruling General People’s Congress and the main offices of the water utility.
However, sources close to Ahmar accused loyalist forces of breaking the truce by firing on his compound.
In Taez, loyalist security forces shot dead seven anti-government protesters yesterday, witnesses said, after 21 were killed as a four-month-long sit-in in a central square was smashed.
Five were killed in central Taez, witnesses said. Others clashed with police while trying to enter the city, leaving two protesters dead.
Witnesses said security forces were attempting to prevent anyone from gathering in Taez yesterday, firing on those who tried to do so.
The UN human rights office put the death toll in Taez since Sunday at more than 50 with hundreds more injured.
“The UN human rights office has received reports ... that more than 50 people have been killed since Sunday in Taez by Yemeni army, Republican Guards and other government-affiliated elements who forcibly destroyed the protest camp in Horriya Square using water cannons, bulldozers and live ammunition,” it said in a statement released in Geneva.
Saleh has been clinging to power despite mounting pressure from the international community to agree his departure from office.
In the south, suspected al-Qaeda fighters killed four Yemeni soldiers and wounded 10 yesterday in an attack near the city of Zinjibar, a security official said, while a medic said two others had died of their wounds.
The attack was on a military checkpoint about a kilometer from Zinjibar. Witnesses said the militants also set fire to 10 military vehicles.
The hospital received 40 soldiers on Monday who had wounded in Zinjibar fighting, some of whom were in a serious condition, the medic added.
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