Yemen: More Demonstrators Killed, UN Demands Inquiry

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Yemeni security forces killed at least five peaceful demonstrators on Tuesday, who were participating in a rally in Sana’a as part of the now daily protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The ‘Yemen Post’ said that at least 80 people were wounded and five women were arrested by Republican Guards.

On Tuesday it was women who were the protagonists in a massive rally in the capital to protest the killing of a girl in Taiz, the first female victim in the repression of the popular movement against the Saleh regime of Saleh, who has been in power for 33 years.

Sources close to the protesters claimed that yesterday five other protesters were killed and dozens more injured, while 400 people were arrested, eight of them women.

President Saleh’s son Ahmed is the head of the Republican Guard, but a part of the armed forces, including some in the Republican Guard itself, have joined the dissidents. The repression of the protests has, therefore, now been joined by clashes between rival military units; some sources said that 18 soldiers were killed in such fighting yesterday.

Today the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights “strongly condemned the killing of an unspecified number of peaceful demonstrators in Sana’a and Taiz in the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force” by the Yemeni army.

“We are very concerned about the use of excessive force with impunity (…). We call for an independent and transparent inquiry. Those responsible for hundreds of killings in the last eight months must be tried,” said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the High Commissioner Navi Pillay.

MISNA

MISNA, or the Missionary International Service News Agency, provides daily news ‘from, about and for’ the 'world’s Souths', not just in the geographical sense, since December 1997.

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