YEMEN’S PRESIDENT Ali Abdullah Saleh declared a state of emergency yesterday after more than 40 anti-government protesters were shot dead and hundreds left injured in the bloodiest day yet on the streets of the capital.
Unseen gunmen opened fire on a gathering of up to 100,000 worshippers from rooftops and buildings overlooking the tented sit-in at Sana’a University as Friday prayers ended, in an apparent planned attack on demonstrators calling for an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 32-year rule.
As worshippers, including women and children, rose from prayer, black smoke filled the sky at the south end of the mile-long encampment, home to several thousand protesters who have been camping out on the streets for the past month.
Amid fears the tented village was being set alight activists rushed to the scene of the blaze to find tyres burning behind a breeze block wall – built last week to prevent the spread of the expanding demonstration. While activists gathered in front of the concrete barrier, plainclothes gunmen shot into the crowd in a sustained attack that lasted up to an hour.
Cries of “Allah Akhbar” (God is Great) rang out from protesters through the gunfire as men and children dropped to the ground.
In horrific scenes, demonstrators ran with the dead and wounded towards the mosque turned medical centre half a mile down the street as bullets continued to fly. Manned by a team of volunteer doctors and nurses, the makeshift field hospital was rapidly overwhelmed by a continuous stream of injured and dying.
“This is a massacre,” shouted one doctor as he treated an unconscious patient with a gunshot wound to the head on the tiled courtyard floor in the shadows of the mosque’s minaret. “This is what Saleh does to his people,” he added.
Amid claims by protesters that the non-uniformed assassins were in fact soldiers in civilian clothes, Mr Saleh announced a state of emergency and denied accusations security forces were involved in the attack. The nationwide emergency bans all civilians from carrying weapons, but other restrictions, such as curfews, a ban on unlicensed gatherings and a military presence on the streets remained unclear last night.
Yesterday’s violent assault on protesters in the capital came at the end of a week of heightened unrest which saw multiple clashes between anti-government protesters, security forces and pro-Saleh loyalists in the highland city of Taiz, 130 miles south of the capital and in the western port city of Hodeidah, which left at least one person dead and dozens injured.
Daily anti-government protests began in the capital last month, on the night of Hosni Mubarak’s resignation in Egypt. Since then numbers and the momentum of protests have grown with demonstrations spreading across the country.
Mr Saleh has made several unsuccessful attempts to defuse the crisis, offering concessions to the political opposition and stating he will not stand for re-election at the end of his term in 2013. But the growing violence has halted all political dialogue. Last week’s offer by the beleaguered president included a proposal to transfer power to a parliamentary system by the end of the year, but was quickly rejected by the opposition and street protesters maintaining their call for his resignation.