19 September 2011

SANAA: Yemeni government forces opened fire with anti-aircraft guns and automatic weapons on tens of thousands of anti-government protesters in the capital demanding ouster of their longtime ruler, killing at least 22 and wounding dozens, witnesses said.

The attack was the deadliest in months against protesters and comes as tensions have been escalating in the long, drawn-out stalemate between the regime and the opposition. The president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, left for Saudi Arabia for treatment after being severely wounded in a June 3 attack on his palace, raising hopes for his swift removal – but instead, he has dug in, refusing to step down.

The protest movement has stepped up demonstrations the past week, angered after Saleh deputized his vice president to negotiate a power-transfer deal. Many believe the move is just the latest of many delaying tactics.

The stalled Gulf-brokered power transfer deal will be signed by Saleh’s deputy within a week, a senior Saudi official said.

“To end the crisis we must agree with the opposition on a mechanism for implementing the Gulf initiative,” a spokesman for Saleh’s ruling General People’s Congress party, Tariq al-Shami, told AFP. “This is why dialogue is necessary” with the opposition, which is demanding that Saleh sign the deal before any discussion on ways to implement it, Shami said.

At the same time, greater numbers of security forces and armed government supporters have also been turning out in the streets in recent days, raising fears of a new bloody confrontation.

More than 100,000 protesters massed Sunday around the state television building and government offices, witnesses said. When the crowd began to march toward the nearby Presidential Palace, security forces opened fire. Snipers fired down at the crowd from nearby rooftops, and plainclothed Saleh supporters armed with rifles, swords and batons attacked the protesters.

“This peaceful protest was confronted by heavy weapons and anti-aircraft guns,” said Mohammad al-Sabri, an opposition spokesman. He vowed that the intensifying protests “will not stop and will not retreat.”

He accused security forces of preventing ambulances from evacuating the wounded and collecting bodies of the slain protesters.

A Yemeni opposition television network carried live video of men carrying wounded protesters on stretchers, including a motionless man whose face was covered in blood and eyes wrapped with bandages. Others were lying on the floor in the chaotic field hospital.

Protesters throwing stones managed to break through security force lines and advance to near the Yemeni Republican Palace at the heart of Sanaa, turning the clashes with the security forces into street battles.

Demonstrations also took place Sunday in many other Yemeni cities, including Taiz, Saada, Ibb and Damar.

Earlier Sunday, government troops shelled for the third day a district in the capital held for months by a powerful anti-government tribal chief and his armed supporters.

Sheikh Sadeq al-Ahmar said his fighters did not return fire after the shelling by the elite Republican Guard. Ahmar said he did not want to give Saleh any excuse not to sign a deal to transfer power after ruling the impoverished country for 33 years.

Saturday, thousands of anti-government protesters in Yemen stormed the capital’s main university, preventing the first day of classes from beginning and tearing down pictures of the longtime leader.

Around the capital, at least 20 other schools were kept closed to students because many of the buildings are being used as outposts by government-linked gunmen and soldiers who defected to the opposition, said Fatma Mutahar, principal of Ayesha School in Sanaa and an Education Ministry official.

“No studying, no teaching until the president goes,” the students chanted as they marched into the Sanaa university campus, which is near the epicenter of Yemen’s opposition movement – a protest camp occupying the capital’s center since February.

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.