Yemeni forces clashed with soldiers backing a mass protest
movement in the capital Sanaa on Wednesday, breaching a short-lived truce on a
day when six protesters were killed by snipers, shelling and gunfire.
In another sign of worsening
conditions for a deal to end eight months of protests
against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary
General Abdbullatif al-Zayani left Sanaa empty-handed after two days striving
to get a transfer of power pact signed to defuse the crisis.
The state news agency SABA
quoted him as saying he would have to wait until "conditions were
favorable" to achieve this, suggesting the two sides were no closer to
agreement.
A diplomatic source also told
Reuters the United Nations planned to send home 50 employees on Friday:
"It is because of deteriorating security conditions."
Civil war looms in the
impoverished Arabian Peninsula country over Saleh's refusal to quit power
despite the popular revolt demanding an end to his autocratic 33-year rule.
Escalating confrontations
between loyalist forces and soldiers who have defected to the opposition have
created a worst-case scenario for diplomats struggling to finalize a power
transition deal while Saleh recuperates in Riyadh from a June assassination
attempt.
They are trying to prevent a
further spread of the conflict in the country on the doorstep of Saudi Arabia, which holds
the world's largest oil reserves.
Chaos could also offer fertile
ground to al Qaeda, whose militants in the past few months have seized cities
in a province just east of a key oil shipping channel.
After hours of calm on
Wednesday, somber prayers were shattered by heavy gunfire and explosions at a
mass funeral for those who died in the previous three days of fighting. Curls
of smoke rose from Sanaa's skyline.
Doctors said nine soldiers had
been killed from troops loyal to defected General Ali Mohsen, who threw his
weight behind the protests in March. They were hit by mortar fire that not only
hit Mohsen's base, but "Change Square," the name given to the 4-km
(2.5-mile) encampment where thousands have staged a sit-in for months at the
foot of the military base.
One protester was killed and
another wounded in a second day of deadly mortar fire on Change Square.
Five more were killed by
snipers lurking on rooftops and by stray bullets from flashpoint areas where
troops were clashing near the protest camp, doctors and witnesses said.
Residents of Hayel street,
near Change Square, say they believe their neighborhood is full of snipers,
leaving residents trapped inside their homes. "We're too afraid to go out,
even to go to the store," one resident said.
The latest killings raised
the death toll to around 85 in four days of bloodshed, shattering an uneasy
stalemate that had set in during fitful efforts to mediate the crisis.
"We were just sitting in
the tent and suddenly we heard these explosions. We all jumped to the floor, I
prepared myself for death. Then bam! I looked up and Tareq was hit, his leg was
bleeding," said Abdelaziz, whose friend was wounded in the attack.
"My stomach was in
knots, I went running for an ambulance."
President Barack Obama
expressed sympathy for Yemeni protesters at the U.N. General Assembly on
Wednesday.
"America supports their
aspirations," he said. "We must work with Yemen's neighbors and our
partners around the world to seek a path that allows for a peaceful transition
of power from President Saleh, and a movement to free and fair elections as
soon as possible."
DEEPENING DIVISIONS
Government troops and Mohsen's
forces have divided control of Sanaa between themselves through a maze of
checkpoints and roadblocks. Protesters lost patience after months of deadlock
and upset the balance on Sunday when they marched into territory controlled by
pro-Saleh troops, as part of an escalation plan they hoped would add pressure
for change.
They were met with heavy
gunfire that killed 26 protesters in one evening, touching off heavy fighting
between government troops and Mohsen's forces.
Both sides blamed the other
for the breach of the ceasefire. But residents at one site of the clashes said
they saw Mohsen's troops ambushed as they moved to relinquish an area they
seized during the past days of fighting, and clashes were renewed.
Just before fighting around
the city kicked off, tens of thousands kneeled on prayer mats on a main road in
Sanaa to mourn the dead from days past. The bodies were then carried through
the crowd wrapped in flags and strewn with leaves, while explosions thudded in
the distance.
"Shame on us if we don't
avenge the blood of the martyrs ... The blood of our brothers will not be
spilled in vain!" one speaker at the funeral said over a megaphone, as
mourners shouted, "Escalation, escalation!"
Smoke rose from another part
of Sanaa and ambulance sirens blared as mourners, some holding flowers in the
air, began to march toward a graveyard chanting "Justice for the
martyrs."
Human Rights Watch warned that
the excessive use of force to suppress protesters signaled the danger in the
Gulf transition plan of a planned immunity clause drafted on behalf of Saleh
and his family-dominated coterie.
"These latest killings
by Yemeni security forces show exactly why there should be no
get-out-of-jail-free card for those responsible," said Joe Stork, deputy
Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
Back in Change Square, no
more than an hour after it was hit by shells, protesters calmly lounged in
their tents.
In the tent where one man was
killed, blood pooled near the middle of the floor while protesters sitting at
the other end ate their lunch.
"It's no big deal,
they're trying to scare us," said the elderly Abdulmalik al-Qassim.
"We'll stay here till we die."
(Writing by Erika Solomon and
Isabel Coles; Editing by Reed
Stevenson and Michael
Roddy)
Casino Classic
Source : Reuters
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