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Death toll from fresh clashes in Yemen’s Taiz rises to 10 amid efforts of ceasefire

02 December 2011 21:59 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Death toll from Friday’s clashes between Yemeni government troops and opposition-led militia in southern flashpoint city of Taiz increased to 10, officials said hours after the country’s new prime minister called for ceasefire, APA reports quoting Xnhua.

"Five government soldiers were killed and up to 30 others wounded during the fighting on Friday in Taiz," a provincial security official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, a medic at the opposition-run protesters’ camp said "five bodies of civilians, who were killed during the shelling on Friday, were brought to the camp’s field hospital and 12 people were wounded."

Witnesses said clashes took place in almost all streets of the city’s crowded neighborhoods, in which the rival forces fired artillery and heavy machine-guns. They said hundreds of buildings were wrecked and the city’s residents began to flee to villages.

Taiz, some 200 km south of the capital Sanaa, is a key hotbed of the opposition seeking to put Saleh on trial after his stepping down required by the Gulf-brokered deal.

The violence continued for a third consecutive day, where battles on Thursday left at least 17 people killed and more than 40 injured from each side.

Despite continuous mediating efforts to cease fire in Taiz, the violence spread to neighboring province of Ibb, about 150 km south of Sanaa, where opposition militia intercepted and clashed with a government military unit en-route to Taiz on Friday, according to several witnesses.

One of the militia’s officials told Xinhua on condition of anonymity that "Saleh’s military unit was deployed to Taiz to shell the city and we forced them to go back to its barracks in Yarim district in the northern part of Ibb."

The ongoing violence prompted newly-appointed Prime Minister Mohamed Basindwa early Friday to call for an immediate truce, warning that he would reconsider the decision of forming an opposition-led interim government that works with the ruling party if the latter’s troops keep shelling the Taiz city.

Basindwa is due to announce his interim cabinet with equal seats from the opposition coalition and the ruling party on Saturday or Sunday, according to the opposition’s spokesman Mohamed Qahtan.

However, thousands of protesters rallied across the country on Friday against the Gulf-brokered power-transfer deal and demanded Saleh be prosecuted.