Yemeni police stormed a camp set up by thousands of protesters demanding the end of President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 32-year rule, killing one person and wounding hundreds early on March 12, witnesses and medical sources said. Witnesses said hundreds of security forces, armed with bats and knives and using potent teargas, invaded the area where protesters have been camping for weeks in the capital, Sanaa. Doctors at the sit-in said police were blocking medical teams from entering the area and one doctor said a young boy had been fatally shot in the head. “We think around 300 are wounded,” one of them was reported as saying.
A wave of unrest, inspired partly by popular revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, has weakened Saleh’s grip on his poverty-stricken country. Clashes between rock-throwing Saleh loyalists and protesters broke out as the demonstrators tried to extend the area of the sit-in to make room for increasing numbers. Witnesses said police smashed into the site in a pre-dawn raid as protesters were preparing for early morning prayers. “It felt like a massacre, there were police teams in official uniforms and plain-clothes police and they were attacking the protesters,” one witness said. “They used tear gas and gunfire and chased some people out into the streets.”