Protester killed in clashes with police in southern Yemen

Sep 30, 2009, 15:16 GMT

Sana'a, Yemen - A protester was killed and 22 people, including nine policemen, were injured in clashes in a southern Yemeni city Wednesday, local officials and witnesses said.

In Dhalea, the provincial city of the southern province of Dhalea, police fired into the air to disperse protesters after they burst into offices of government agencies in the city, a local official said.

'Police intervened to disperse the demonstrators after they began ransacking state buildings,' the official, who asked not to be named, told the German Press Agency dpa by telephone.

The officials said a protester died in a hospital. Eleven others received treatment and were discharged. They said armed protesters opened fire on the police, injuring nine.

Protesters, carrying flags of the former southern Yemen and shouting anti-government slogans, had previously marched in the city's streets to demand the release of southern activists, witnesses said.

The protest was called by the Southern Movement, a group calling for the south of Yemen to secede from the north.

Similar protests took place in three other southern cities, but without reports on confrontations or casualties.

The Southern Movement has been organizing protests across the southern provinces of Yemen, calling for more rights for citizens in the south.

Violent anti-government protests have engulfed cities in Yemen's southern provinces in recent months, leaving dozens of casualties among protesters and security forces amid claims by the southerners that the central government exercises discriminatory policies against them.

The violence highlights the increasing tensions between southern and northern Yemen, nearly 15 years after a civil war in 1994 that ended with the defeat of the southern military by northern forces led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

North and South Yemen were united in 1990. In 1994, southern leaders announced the secession of the south and battled northern forces led by Saleh for 10 weeks in a civil war that ended in their defeat.