 SANAA - At least three demonstrators and a policeman were killed in clashes Sunday between Yemeni security forces and thousands of protesters at an opposition rally, witnesses said.
Around 15 demonstrators were injured in the rally held in the southern port city of Aden, witnesses told AFP, adding police used water cannons and live ammunition to disperse the crowd. ‘Hundreds of protestors have been arrested,’ the secretary of Aden’s socialist party, Ali Mounasser, told AFP.
| Water cannons make it a real Arab demonstration all right. |
Some of the demonstrators living in the formerly socialist-ruled south called for their region to split from the north which it merged with in 1990. A southern bid to break away in 1994 was crushed by northern forces loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and southerners say they have since faced discrimination as a result.
| Because southern Yemen was a socialist paradise before the merger. Ev'ryone knows that. |
Last August, thousands of protestors in the capital Sanaa seethed called for the Yemeni government to resign because of falling living standards and rising food prices in one of the worldÂ’s poorest states. |