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Government shelling kills 14 in southern Yemen

11 November 2011 21:25 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Yemeni security forces fired tank and artillery shells at a restive southern city on Friday, killing 14 people, including three women and a 9-year-old boy, APA reports quoting Associated Press.

Violence has escalated in the Arab worldâ€™s poorest country throughout a nearly nine-month popular uprising seeking to oust longtime autocratic President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

International diplomacy has failed to stop the crisis, with Saleh repeatedly refusing to sign a U.S.-backed proposal by Yemenâ€™s powerful Gulf neighbors that would grant him immunity from prosecution if he hands over power to his vice president.

Security across the country has broken down and clashes between government forces and army units that have joined the uprising regularly shake Yemeni cities.

In the countryâ€™s south, al-Qaida-linked militants have taken over entire towns, raising Western fears they will have freer rein to use the area as a staging ground for international attacks.

In Fridayâ€™s violence, troops from the Republican Guard, which is led by Salehâ€™s son and is a pillar of his rule, shelled two neighborhoods in the southern city of Taiz and fired at protesters in the cityâ€™s main square.

Fourteen people were killed, said a medical official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Taiz, a hotbed of the opposition, has been particularly violent recently, with government troops regularly clashing with soldiers who have defected and sided with the anti-Saleh protesters.

Witnesses said the violence began Thursday when gunmen shot a soldier. Eight security personnel were wounded in Fridayâ€™s fighting, the medical official said.

The Yemen Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement that hospitals face shortages of medicine and are struggling to treat the wounded in Taiz. The rights group also said Salehâ€™s forces have been arresting people in the city indiscriminately and holding them in unspecified locations.

In the capital, Sanaa, tens of thousands of demonstrators held competing rallies for and against the regime.

In one area, regime supporters chanted, "The people want Ali Abdullah Saleh" â€” a variation of the chant "the people want to topple the regime" that became famous during the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.

In another Sanaa neighborhood, anti-government protesters called for Saleh to face trial for the bloody crackdown on protesters, which has killed hundreds and wounded thousands.