A 21-year old protester was shot dead after clashes broke out between police and demonstrators in south Yemen, his father said, as unrest spread across the Arabian Peninsula state.
Mohammed Ali Alwani was among two people hit as police fired shots into the air to try to break up around 500 protesters gathered in the southern port town of Aden.
Protests against the rule of president Ali Abdullah Saleh spread across Yemen today with hundreds of people taking to the streets of Sanaa, Aden and Taiz.
In the capital Sanaa, at least 800 protesters marched through the streets near Sanaa University despite police efforts to break up the demonstration.
"We're no weaker than Tunisians and Egyptians, and our situation is worse than theirs," said Rafea Abdullah, a Sanaa University student, referring to the "people power" revolts that ousted the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia over the last month.
Saleh, a US ally against al-Qaeda, has ruled the poor and fractious Arabian Peninsula state for more than 30 years.
The threat of turmoil in Yemen, struggling to quash a resurgent wing of al-Qaeda and keep rebellions at bay in its north and south, pushed Saleh to say he would step down in 2013 and call for a national dialogue, that the opposition accepted.
But anti-government protests have continued for the past six days, despite often violent clashes with government loyalists.
Police in Sanaa had earlier today been unable to block hundreds of government loyalists wielding batons and daggers from beating and chasing off protesters and journalists at the university, which has become a launchpad for protests. A journalist saw four people wounded in the melee.
After locking student protesters inside the campus, police fired shots in the air to break up the loyalist groups, who were picked up by luxury cars which sped away, a reporter said.
Students later left the campus to join hundreds of anti-government protesters in the streets.
At least 500 people rallied in the agro-industrial city Taiz, south of Sanaa, and 500 or more protesters had gathered in the southern port town of Aden.
"No more marginalisation of the people of Aden! No more corruption and oppression," chanted protesters there. Most demonstrators were from among the unemployed youth in Yemen, where the jobless rate is at least 35 per cent.
Of the 23 million people in Yemen, which is teetering on the brink of collapse into a failed state, 40 per cent live on less than $2 a day and a third suffer chronic hunger. Jobs are scarce, corruption is rife, and the population is expanding rapidly as oil and water resources are drying up.
Protests over the past week have been smaller than in preceding weeks, when tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, but demonstrators have become more strident in calling for Saleh's resignation.
Reuters