At Least 40 Protesters Are Killed in Yemen
A medic helped an injured anti-government protester in Sana on Friday.
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By LAURA KASINOF and J. DAVID GOODMAN
SANA, Yemen — Security forces and government supporters opened fire on demonstrators in the capital on Friday, killing at least 40 people, according to a doctor at a makeshift hospital near the scene. But the crackdown failed to disperse the protest, the largest seen so far in the center of the city.
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President Ali Abdullah Saleh declared a state of emergency shortly after the violence, and denied that security forces had been involved in any shooting.
The level of violence dwarfed that seen in previous clashes during weeks of large protests in cities around Yemen calling for Mr. Saleh’s immediate ouster.
By escalating its violent response, the government appeared to take up the same playbook that Libya and Bahrain have followed this week. The move opened a troubling new chapter for Yemen, a strife-torn nation that is home to one of Al Qaeda’s most active affiliates and has been an American ally in the fight against terrorism.
At a news conference in Sana, Mr. Saleh claimed that the clashes on Friday were between “citizens and demonstrators” and that “the police were not present and did not open fire.”
President Obama condemned violence in a written statement that called on President Saleh “to adhere to his public pledge to allow demonstrations to take place peacefully.” He added: “Those responsible for today’s violence must be held accountable.”
The death toll rose through the afternoon as some of the more than 200 people who were wounded by gunfire, or by rocks hurled by government supporters, succumbed to their injuries, according to the doctor, Muhammed Rizq, and others at a makeshift hospital near the protest site. The majority of those killed had been shot in the head or neck, doctors said.
Despite the heavy toll, the protesters in Sana kept control of a lengthening portion of Ring Road, which stretches from Sana University to a central highway overpass, as the shooting appeared to halt in the middle of the afternoon.
The security forces that had massed at the protest’s south end then began to pull back into the city center, firing tear gas as hundreds of protesters gave chase, hurling rocks. People in apartments overlooking the action tossed onions down to the protesters for them to use to relieve the effects of the tear gas.
Before the shooting, the protest had swelled to tens of thousands of people and stretched for a mile from its center at Sana University.
The violence began almost immediately after the protesters’ noon prayers, conducted en masse in the street. As they rose, government supporters in plain clothes opened fire from rooftops and windows that southern end of the protest, while security forces fired guns and a water cannon, apparently in an effort to keep demonstrators from moving further into the center of the capital.
A heavy cloud of black smoke over the downtown commercial district at the southern end of the demonstration as government supporters burned protesters’ tents shortly before shooting started.
Though many moved north along Ring Road and away from the fighting, a crowd of mostly tribal men from the outskirts of the capital stood firm. A man walked through the crowd with a microphone yelling, “Peaceful, peaceful! Don’t be afraid of the bullets!”
Then the shooting appeared to stop, and the security forces withdrew about a mile down the wet, rock-strew road.
Scores of injured men were carried in bloody blankets through the crowd of protesters to a mosque that had been turned into a makeshift hospital, with the dead and wounded lying on its floor. Many of the wounded appeared to have been hurt by rocks as well as bullets.
Some of the men in the protest raided buildings where gunmen had been seen. The men peeked out of windows and flashed peace signs to indicate to the crowd below that they were not, themselves, snipers. Flames erupted from a building said to have housed a sniper.
In several raids at a far edge of the protest, men said to be a snipers were caught and beaten by angry demonstrators. Protesters pulled one suspected sniper from an apartment overlooking the demonstration, and said that they found military uniforms and Defense Ministry identification in the apartment.
With the violence spreading, many people in central Sana took cover. “Today is the worst day; this is a new Qaddafi,” said Khalil al-Zekry, who hunkered down in his video shop along the protest route.
Tensions have increased in the capital. Clashes broke out last weekend at the continuing sit-in near the university. But during those clashes, the security forces generally used tear gas and fired into the air rather than at protesters.
In an attempt to quell opposition, Mr. Saleh has offered concessions, including a promise not to run for a new term in 2013 and a proposal to hand over some powers to Parliament. But demonstrators and the political opposition have rejected his proposals, out of suspicion that Mr. Saleh, an American ally in the fight against terrorism, would find a way to extend his 32-year-rule once protests subsided.
Before Friday, at least 40 protesters had been killed in weeks of demonstrations across the country. Most of those deaths occurred in the restive southern port city of Aden, where protests have focused on seceding from the nation rather forcing Mr. Saleh from power.
Ibrahim Raja, an accountant who had protested against Mr. Saleh’s rule on Friday but then fled the violence, stressed the peaceful nature of the demonstrations in the capital, opening his coat to show that he had no weapon. The Yemeni population, among the poorest in the Arab world, is also among the most heavily armed.
“All of us have a weapon in house,” he said. “None of us have our weapons here.”
Another protester, Abdul-Ghani Soliman, said he was not surprised by the violence.
“I actually expect more than this, because freedom requires martyrs,” said Mr. Soliman, an unemployed tribesman from outside Sana. “This will continue, and it will grow.”
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