Police in Yemen stormed the camp of thousands of protesters demanding the end of president Ali Abdullah Saleh's 32-year rule, killing one person and wounding hundreds early today.
Witnesses said hundreds of security forces, wielding bats and knives and using teargas, invaded the area where protesters have been camping for weeks in the capital, Sanaa.
Doctors in the camp 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," he said.
Some witnesses said they heard gunfire, but police appeared to be withdrawing.
"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 teargas and gunfire and chased some people out into the streets."
A wave of unrest, inspired partly by popular revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, has weakened Mr Saleh's grip on his poverty-stricken country, a neighbour of oil giant Saudi Arabia and home to an agile and ambitious regional al-Qaeda wing.
A day earlier, record crowds took to the streets of Sanaa and other cities from north to south, in a "Friday of no return", calling on Mr Saleh to quit and dismissing his offer a day earlier to draft a new constitution and carry out electoral reform.
Protesters are frustrated by rampant corruption and soaring unemployment in their Arabian Peninsula state, where 40 per cent live on $2 a day (€or less and a third face chronic hunger.
Clashes between rock-throwing Saleh loyalists and protesters broken out late yesterday as the demonstrators tried to extend the area where they were camping to make room for increasing numbers.
Reuters