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Summary Six people were shot dead in Yemen on Sunday, including a 52 year-old woman.
The mishap occurred when plain-clothed government loyalists launched a sniper attack on a mass rally in Sanaa calling for President Ali Abdullah Salehs resignation.Sundays bloodshed follows a brutal assault by government troops on a rally in the capital on Saturday, heightening fears that the impoverished country may be heading towards civil war.Witnesses said Saturdays demonstration was dispersed when plain-clothed snipers opened fire on them from nearby rooftops as they approached Zubayri street, a strategic intersection controlled by the Republican Guard – an elite force headed by the presidents son Ahmed.We didnt see any soldiers, we just heard gunshots coming from the houses all around us, said Ahmed Bin Mubarak, a professor of business administration at Sanaa University. After that I saw men slumped on the ground in pools of blood.The violence escalated when a division of defected soldiers who had been flanking the demonstrators started returning fire with automatic weapons. Protesters say they were caught in the middle as the two sides hurled mortars and anti-aircraft missiles at each other.Most of the dead protesters were shot in the back of the head or the neck, said Mohammed al-Qubati, a surgeon directing operations at a makeshift hospital in Change Square. There is no doubt in my mind that they were shooting to kill.Among the corpses were four civilians and two soldiers from the 1st armored division, headed by renegade army general Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar who defected to the opposition in March. For decades Mohsin served as the regimes iron fist, helping Saleh win a bloody civil war in 1994 against the south.Despite defecting, he still has access to nearly half of the countrys military resources and assets. Protesters who had previously touted Mohsins soldiers as heroes and protectors of the revolution have started to express their apprehension with some claiming that their presence is derailing their peaceful protest movement.We had no say in this. Ali Mohsin and his solders are giving them more of a justification for the crackdown, said Ahmed Al-Sarbi, a 24-year-old activist.Tensions between the protesters and soldiers spilled over for the first time on Sunday when a group of Mohsins men tried to force their way past a line of volunteers in to the field hospital in search of one of their men.Yemens deputy information minister Abdou Janadi said Sundays casualties were unfortunate but went on to accuse Mohsin of provoking the clashes and using the protesters as a human shield.In a defiant televised speech on Sunday evening Saleh said Yemen was witnessing an attempted military-islamic coup and that the military and police forces would bear on their shoulders responsibility for the future of the homeland.Yemenis are waiting for UN Security Council members to agree to a resolution expected to urge Saleh to hand over power in return for immunity from prosecution. Britain drafted the resolution in consultation with France and the US and intends to circulate it to the 15-nation Security Council on Tuesday.Protesters have called for decisive action from the Security Council. Many in the anti-Saleh camp accuse both Riyadh and Washington of continuing to support Saleh, who had once been their ally against Al-Qaeda in Yemen-based wing. They accuse the west of adopting double standards by supporting the pro-democracy uprising in Libya but not in Yemen.
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