Security forces fired on protesters in Yemen on Sunday, killing at least six people, hospital officials said, as Yemenis waited for international action to force President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.
Witnesses said snipers positioned on rooftops overlooking the street opened fire on the protesters, who were being led by dissident troops, who returned fire and fierce clashes ensued as unarmed protesters frantically dispersed.
Security forces fear that protesters could block off the street, a major throughway for traffic, according to residents. Medical officials stationed at a makeshift field hospital near Change Square said three protesters and two dissident soldiers were killed, and at least 40 people wounded in Sunday’s crackdown.
In a separate protest in Yemen’s second-largest city Taez, a 52-year-old woman was killed when government troops opened fire on demonstrators also calling for Saleh’s resignation.
Violence in Yemen, strategically located at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, has surged over the last two days, with security forces killing at least 12 on Saturday while al Qaeda insurgents blew up a gas pipeline, halting the impoverished nation’s gas exports.
Earlier Sunday, General Ahmar released a statement calling on the international community to take immediate action to stop the bloodshed and force Saleh to step down.
“We are calling for an urgent intervention by the international community to bring an immediate stop to the massacres by this ignorant murderer,” the dissident commander said.
He said it was time for the international community to “force” Saleh to sign a deal brokered by impoverished Yemen’s wealthy Gulf neighbours under which the president would transfer power to his deputy in return for a promise of immunity from prosecution.
Despite mounting pressure from Western governments as well as the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Saleh has for months refused to sign the deal, even though he has repeatedly promised that he would.
Yemenis have been waiting for UN Security Council members to agree to a resolution expected to urge Saleh to hand over power under a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) peace plan.
Saleh says he is ready to step down but wants to ensure that control of the country is transferred to safe hands.
Britain has been drafting a resolution on Yemen in consultation with France and the United States and intends to circulate it to the full 15-nation Security Council shortly after a closed-door meeting on Tuesday. Russia and China, which joined forces to veto a European-sponsored resolution against Syria earlier this month, are not expected to block the resolution on Saleh, diplomats in New York have said.
Yemeni officials have said the attack on the pipeline on Saturday was in retaliation for the killing of the head of the media department of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in an air raid on militant outposts in Yemen last week.
The US and Saudi Arabia, which shares a border with Yemen, fear al Qaeda is trying to take advantage of the country’s political vacuum to expand its territory in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, near a strategic shipping strait used by tankers carrying some 3 million barrels of oil a day.
