Three people died and hundreds were injured on Saturday in some of the fiercest clashes between police and anti-government protesters since popular unrest started to batter faction-riven Yemen in January. Two people were killed in the capital Sanaa and a boy of 12 died in the southern city of Mukalla, with fighting reported in at least two other cities as protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh's 32-year rule turning ever more violent.
The United States said it was dismayed by the growing fatalities and called for calm, warning that Yemen could suffer the same fate as Libya unless there was dialogue. Hundreds of police fired volleys of tear gas and used water cannon in a pre-dawn operation apparently aimed at preventing a makeshift protester camp spreading any further in Sanaa. The crowds responded with a hail of rocks and live ammunition was fired. Injured demonstrators were carried to a nearby mosque which was turned into a makeshift medical centre. A doctor said a young boy was fatally shot. Another source said the dead person was a man from eastern Yemen.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.