Yemenis hold million-strong protest

Tue Mar 8, 2011

About one million people have staged a protest in southern Yemen, as forces loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh have killed a boy and injured several others.

The 12-year-old Omar Atta died in hospital in Yemen's southern province of Ibb on Monday night after sustaining a gunshot injury, Reuters reported.

The incident occurred after Saleh loyalists stormed an anti-government protest camp, also wounding around 60 people in the attack.

Almost one million protesters marched through the streets of Ibb on Tuesday to condemn the attack.

"My son sacrificed himself, this is my family's gift to the revolution in Yemen," Omar's father said in a tearful speech to protesters in Ibb on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, heavy security forces and armored vehicles were deployed across the capital to guard the Sana'a University, which has been the epicenter of anti-government protests for the last two weeks.

Tanks were stationed in main streets leading to the presidential palace, while armored vehicles were deployed to guard foreign embassies, banks and governmental compounds.

On Tuesday, large numbers of security forces were also deployed in nearly all major cities rocked by protests, especially in the southern provinces, where anti-government sentiments have been on the rise.

On Monday, President Saleh called for a national-dialogue conference in an attempt to end the impasse with the opposition, which was rejected by the opposition's rotating President Yaseen Saeed Noman.

Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds more have been injured in the Yemeni government's violent crackdown on anti-regime protests.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/168887.html.