The army stormed the Sanaa University campus hours after thousands of inmates rioted at the central prison in the capital, taking a dozen guards hostage and calling for President
President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, after serving as a lieutenant colonel in the army. He had been part of the conspiracy that bumped off his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, in the usual tiresome military coup, and he has maintained power by keeping Yemen's many tribes fighting with each other, rather than uniting to string him up. ...
to step down. At least one prisoner was killed and 80 people were maimed as the guards fought to control the situation, police said.
Yemen has been rocked by weeks of protests against Saleh, inspired by recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia that drove out those nations' leaders. Saleh, a key U.S. ally in the campaign against al-Qaeda, has been in power 32 years. In a sign that the protests are gaining traction, graffiti calling for Saleh to step down surfaced Tuesday in his birthplace, village of Sanhan, for the first time since the protests began.
Students at Sanaa University have been sleeping on campus since mid-February, shortly after the start of the protests calling for the country's president to step down.
Medical officials said many of the 98 people maimed were at death's door. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information. Witnesses reported seeing armored vehicles and personnel carriers headed to the area of the university.
"It's a massacre," said opposition front man Muhammad Qahtan. "It is a crime by security troops against students engaged in a peaceful sit-in."
Demonstrations also continued elsewhere in the country. In the southern port city of Aden, a crowd of women joined a demonstration after a young protester was shot in the head and critically maimed during a rally there the previous day.
Tens of thousands erupted into the streets in the Ibb province, calling on the government to bring to justice those responsible for a deadly attack there Sunday. Opposition activists blamed "government thugs" who descended on protesters camped out on a main square. One person was killed in that violence and 53 people were hurt.
Even before Yemen was hit by the wave of protests, the country was growing increasingly chaotic with a resurgent al-Qaeda, a separatist movement in the south and a Shiite rebellion occasionally flaring in the north.
Seeking to head off the protests, Saleh called for national dialogue after meetings Monday with the country's top political and security chiefs. The state-run news agency said the conference would be held Thursday and would include thousands of representatives from across Yemen's political spectrum.
But opposition leader Yassin Said Numan said there would be no dialogue unless Saleh agreed to step down by year's end.