A THIRD consecutive day of bloody violence on Yemen’s streets left up to three people dead and several more injured by gunfire in the capital Sana’a, while clashes with security forces continued in the central city of Taiz.
Described as an assassination attempt by Maj Gen Ali Mohsen, leader of the defected 1st Armoured Division, shooting broke out between his men and loyalist tribesmen from President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s own Sanhan tribe as they approached the general’s compound in the west of the capital. The state news agency said four men, attempting via tribal mediation to persuade the powerful Maj Gen Mohsen to rejoin the ailing Mr Saleh, were killed.
Anti-government protesters close to the base of the defected military commander also came under fire from uniformed soldiers and plain-clothes government “thugs” shooting from a road bridge around a quarter of a mile from their six-week-old tented sit-in, say eyewitnesses.
“The protesters were trying to march up that way,” said one man, waving towards the road leading to the military leader’s base. “But soldiers shot at them from above as they walked under the bridge.”
Many of the wounded were taken to a mosque turned medical centre in the heart of the protester’s sprawling encampment. Volunteer doctors attempted to treat multiple casualties with basic medical supplies. One activist died.
The attack on protesters took place just metres from a major hospital already receiving injured tribesmen from the clashes with Maj Gen al-Ahmar’s men.
“We have six men here with gunshot wounds. One is in a critical condition with a bullet wound to the face,” said Dr Abdul al-Hadda. “But one tribesman was dead on arrival.”
In the aftermath of the shootings, protesters, with support from defected soldiers, took further ground in the west of Sana’a, blocking off a six-lane road as they defiantly erected more tents on the tarmac, a mile from the protest centre in “Change Square”.
Violent clashes also continued yesterday in the central city of Taiz, 210km (130 miles) south of the capital. In a brutal military crackdown on Monday, some 15 anti-government protesters died in the city as security forces fired on demonstrators from rooftops.
Human rights organisation Amnesty International put the death toll in two months of unrest in Yemen at 94. With the killings of the past three days, it becomes at least 110. In a new report into human rights violations in Yemen, the group called for an investigation into “brutal repression of protests”.
As Mr Saleh reportedly accepted an invitation on Tuesday to mediated talks with political opposition JMP, in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, to achieve a peaceful transition of power, Amnesty warned against “any political deals that would see Mr Saleh and close relatives offered immunity against prosecution in return for handing over power”.
The president’s son, Ahmed, heads the elite Republican Guard while his nephew, Yahya Saleh, leads both the Central Security Forces and the US-trained Counter Terrorism Unit.
In a rare show of peaceful tolerance, a standoff between protesters and riot police ended without incident at sunset yesterday. Demonstrators and security forces waved goodbye to each other before activists returned to their tented village for prayers.