At least two people have been killed and more than 300 injured after Yemen security forces stormed a protest site where thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators have been camped out for weeks, demanding the ouster of the country’s leader.
In a pre-dawn raid on Saturday, police are said to have used tear gas and hot water mixed with gas to disperse the demonstrators.
Meanwhile, a teenage boy was killed in separate clashes between security forces and protesters in the city of Mukala.
Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from the capital Sanaa, said that the situation remains tense, and that the opposition is accusing the government of committing crimes against the protesters.
“They also say the raid will speed up the revolution, and that president Ali Abdullah Saleh must go now before [he] faces the wrath of the people,” he said.
Also on Saturday, at least three students were injured when security forces opened fire at protesters in the city of Taiz, where residents had gathered to demand that Saleh be put on trial.
The clashes come after tens of thousands of protesters marched on the streets of the capital on Friday, drawing record crowds in a continuing push to demand the ouster of Saleh, who has been in power since 1978.
And in Bahrain:
At least six people are reported dead and hundreds injured after security forces in Bahrain drove out pro-democracy protesters from the Pearl Roundabout in the capital, Manama.
A 12-hour curfew came into force at 4pm in areas of the city including the roundabout, the Bahrain Financial Harbour, and several other buildings which have recently been targets of protests.
By then, most of the area had been cleared after troops backed by tanks and helicopters stormed the site – the focal point of weeks-long anti-government protests in the tiny kingdom – early on Wednesday, an Al Jazeera correspondent said.
Multiple explosions were heard and smoke was seen billowing over central Manama.
Hospital sources said three protesters had been killed and hundreds of others injured in the offensive, the Reuters news agency reported. Three policemen were also reported dead.
The crackdown drew international criticism, with Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, warning that Bahrain and its Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) allies were “on the wrong track.” Both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, which has sent soldiers to Bahrain to support the government, are key US allies in the region.
And more:
Bahrain on Friday tore down the protest movement’s defining monument, the pearl at the center of Pearl Square, a symbolic strike that carried a sense of finality. The official news agency described the razing as a facelift.
“We did it to remove a bad memory,” Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, said at a news conference. “The whole thing caused our society to be polarized. We don’t want a monument to a bad memory.”
The destruction of the monument was part of a chain of events that, in a matter of days, turned Bahrain from a symbol of hopeful pro-democratic protest into one of violent repression.
On Friday, the family of Ahmed Farhan, 30, who was killed on Tuesday by security forces in Sitra, an activist Shiite village south of the capital, received the body of their son, with its shotgun pellet wounds to the back and a gaping hole in the skull. The family had been trying to bring him home to Sitra and bury him there, but permission had been withheld.
In Bahrain, the Arab spring turned to winter in less than a week. Martial law was declared on Tuesday. It is now illegal to hold rallies. Tanks remain outside the central hospital and Saudi troops are here as back-up.