SANA, Yemen — The Yemeni government ratcheted up its violent response to opponents on two fronts Monday, pounding a major coastal city with airstrikes aimed at dislodging Islamic militants, and smashing the country’s largest antigovernment demonstration in overnight clashes that killed more than a dozen protesters, according to witnesses reached by phone.
Residents in the coastal city of Zinjibar said warplanes attacked militant positions with repeated bombing runs beginning early Monday afternoon, a day after Islamist militants took control of the city, seizing banks and a central government compound. The army shelled the compound, which was also the target of many of the airstrikes, according to witnesses in the city.
As bombs fell in the restive south, security forces and plainclothes gunmen swept through a main square in the central city of Taiz, driving out thousands of antigovernment protesters and violently dismantling the country’s largest continuous sit-in.
It was unclear how many people had died in the Zinjibar fighting, which began on Friday: the city is facing a near total breakdown of services, residents said, with little medical services available, and no electricity or water. Hundreds have fled the city to Aden, the largest southern city, or to neighboring villages. Those who could not afford to leave have taken refuge in local mosques, residents said.
In the city of Taiz, west of Zinjibar, security forces and plainclothes gunmen swept through a main square, driving out the thousands of protesters seeking the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Witnesses said that security forces descended from three directions in a thick cloud of tear gas late Sunday afternoon, and that the clashes continued until after midnight with security forces firing water cannons and setting the protesters’ tents ablaze with Molotov cocktails. Video posted on social networking sites by opposition groups showed protesters scattering as plainclothes gunmen fired from doorways and from rooftops. Bulldozers and tractors demolished remnants of the sit-in. Sporadic gunfire echoed through the city on Monday, witnesses said.
A doctor, Taiz Hamoud Aqlan, said Monday night that he could confirm 20 deaths, but that he expected the number to rise. “I know that there are injured people who we can’t even get to because of the constant gunfire,” he said. Some reports put the death toll as high as 70, but they could not be confirmed.
The United States Embassy in Sana, the capital, condemned the “unprovoked and unjustified attack on youth protesters” in a statement, adding that the protesters had “shown both resolve and restraint and have made their viewpoint known through nonviolent means.”
A hospital within the protest area was looted early Monday, forcing the wounded to seek assistance farther away, said Abdulkafi Shamsan, a doctor there. He said about 15 soldiers held nurses at gunpoint as they smashed computers, stole medical supplies and detained several injured patients. “They even shot their guns inside the hospital,” he said.
Mohammed Dabwan, a nearby resident, said no protesters had returned to the square on Monday.
Yemen’s state-run media, quoting an unnamed government security official in Taiz, said the violence there was not an organized crackdown. The official said “armed groups” from the opposition coalition attacked a security station, setting fire to cars. The protesters then “kidnapped soldiers and took them to their sit-in square,” he said, where they were abused by the protesters. The official said the security forces then “decided on their own to go to the square and liberate their colleagues and clear the square from those making the riots, sabotage and murders.”
Witness in Taiz also said the fighting was touched off by a clash at a security station near the protest, but disputed that any soldiers had been kidnapped.
Reporting on events in Yemen was limited Monday by what appeared to be a block on international calls to phones belonging to Sabafone, a cellular network owned by Hamid al-Ahmar, Mr. Saleh’s biggest tribal rival.
Violence broke out in Sana a week ago between government forces and fighters loyal to Mr. Ahmar and his brothers after Mr. Saleh refused to follow through on his promise to sign an agreement leading to his resignation. It was the third time since the uprising began in January that Mr. Saleh had agreed to transfer power, and the third time he reneged on the promise.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/world/middleeast/31yemen.html?_r=2&hpw=&pagewanted=allHow's that Arab spring working out for you liberals? Will you be condemning Saleh's military operations taking place against the 1000+ Islamist fighters rampaging across southern Yemen right now?
