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YEMENI GOVERNMENT SNIPERS firing from rooftops and houses shot into a crowd of tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Friday, killing at least 40 people and injuring hundreds demanding the ouster of the autocratic president.
The protest in the central square was the largest yet in the popular uprising that began a month ago — and the harsh government response marked a new level of brutality from the security forces of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a key — if uneasy — ally in the US campaign against al-Qaeda who has ruled Yemen for 30 years.
Saleh declared a nationwide state of emergency hours after the shootings in the capital, formally giving the security forces a freer hand to confront the demonstrators. There was no word on how long the emergency laws would remain in place.
Dozens of enraged protesters stormed several buildings that were the source of the gunfire, detaining 10 people including paid thugs who they said would be handed over to judicial authorities.
Demonstrators have camped out in squares across Yemen for over a month to demand that Saleh leave office. Security forces and pro-government thugs have used live fire, rubber bullets, tear gas, sticks, knives and rocks to suppress them. The protesters say they won’t go until Saleh does.
“They want to scare and terrorize us. They want to drag us into a cycle of violence — to make the revolution meaningless,” said Jamal Anaam, a 40-year-old activist camping out in the square that the protesters call “Taghyir Square” — Arabic for “Change.”
“They want to repeat the Libyan experiment, but we refuse to be dragged into violence no matter what the price,” he said.
Before the shooting Friday in Sana’a, a military helicopter flew low over the square as protesters arrived from prayers. Gunfire soon erupted from rooftops and houses above the demonstrators, where witnesses said beige-clad elite forces and plainclothes security officials took aim.
A state TV report denied government forces were behind the gunfire.
Police used burning tires and gasoline to make a wall of fire that blocked demonstrators from fleeing down a main road leading to sensitive locations, including the president’s residence.
Panic and chaos swept the square, where dozens of dead and wounded sprawled on the ground. Witnesses said the snipers aimed at heads, chests and necks. Protesters carried their friends, scarves pressed over bleeding wounds.
“It is a massacre,” said Mohammad al-Sabri, an opposition spokesman. “This is part of a criminal plan to kill off the protesters, and the president and his relatives are responsible for the bloodshed in Yemen today.”
Saleh announced a press conference later Friday. Opposition groups also planned an emergency meeting to discuss their next steps.
Before the protests, Yemeni elite forces fortified the president’s residence, the Interior Ministry, the Defense Ministry and the building housing the ruling party, apparently fearing demonstrators would storm those areas, as they have done elsewhere in uprisings across the Middle East.
Doctors at the makeshift field hospital near the protest camp at Sana’a University confirmed at least 40 dead, three of them children. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Interior Minister General Mouthar al-Masri, who is in charge of internal security forces, put the number of dead at 25 and the injured at 200.
Medical officials and witnesses say hundreds were wounded in Friday’s violence, which marks a dramatic escalation of the crisis that has engulfed Yemen.
The protests are just one of the problems in this extremely poor, tribal country. Saleh’s weak central government also faces one of the world’s most active al-Qaeda branches, a secessionist rebellion in the south and a Shiite uprising in the north.
- AP
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So healthcare workers should have to put their lives at risk when there has been a warning for people to stay indoors? I’m sorry, I don’t think so. Why didn’t the person try to organize family to come or else organize to go to a care facility for the said time? I’m sorry but people were instructed to stay indoors.
@Greeneyes17: I’m sorry but who said healthcare workers should put their lives at risk? I’m sorry but that’s a touch of a straw man.
@Greeneyes17: Well this comment shows your level of ignorance on the topic. First of all most of those people with care packages don’t have family or family close by. Second of all what care facility do you suggest ?,These don’t exist. There are nursing homes for elderly people which are usually are full with waiting lists to get in. There are no care facilities that people can just go to. No one expects people to travel when they can’t but measures have to be introduced for national weather emergencies. Temporary live in carers would be an answer but an expensive one. Bottom line is just not as simple as you say and you should stop blaming the disabled for not being able to look after themselves.
@Greeneyes17: you are missing the point care providers can avail of help from the civil defence and defence force to go to there client in a emergency when code red is declared when the weather is bad
@Catherine Sims: excellent Catherine you go and temporarily live in with a vulnerable client juring the next red weather event????????
The health services and army and Gardai did a great job. But the volunteers in the Civil Defence who are volunteers did a fantastic job, on their own time. Often forgotten.
@Porterkev: “volunteers in the civil degence who are volunteers”…. wow thanks for pointing that out
@Porterkev:
One ambulance had to be dug out 6 times
https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/father-son-ambulance-team-praise-14381478
You know what one of the problems was? Too many people didn’t believe it was going to happen. Look back at the Journal comments. This narrative that joe public knew more than the scientists and meteorologists who have studied these things for years, was common.
@Dermot Lane: The cold bite was always coming but there was an admitted real possibility of Storm Emma changing course a few days before coming to Ireland and diverting from the course of going over any part of Ireland at all.
@Shane Corry: people were saying met E had it wrong the evening it hit because it didn’t come at 4pm On the button
Plans should be put in place for those needing care like mentioned above and halls made available to those who need it.
Spending millions yearly on ploughs etc is not viable once in a decade weather.
@Pilib O Muiregan: Dont agree. A snow plough is just a truck that can be used for other purposes. Just bracket on front 2 hold v shaped piece os steel. snow tires not v expensive.
@gregory: in Warsaw they put ploughs on the front of the bin lorries when it’s snowing.
Im supported by clarecare twice a day. Clarecare told their workers to just go to emergency cases on thurs morning but many workets chose to stay at home. All services in Ennis and surrounding areas were fine up til about 6/7pm that eve. No one checked in on thursday no one checked in on friday Saturday or Sunday ie even a phone call.
There was no contingency plans what would have been really useful was phone contact with people who were vulnerable. Many had no one from Wed to Monday.
Conditions were too bad to travel on friday or Saturday but Alternative plans to check in with people would have been better.
The National Standard, even if this exists…, for burying water pipes underground needs to have the depth increased.
@gregory: there is a national standard but it was ignored during the boom. But it never got cold enough for pipes to freeze, this time.
I think the publicity for the emergency services is over done during the storm. There’s very good stories of great work no doubt but if you’re working in this area it’s just part of the job we don’t need to heap praise in them just pay them more where they should be.
1/2 What will become of people like my brother when they are forced out of their residential centres into dispersed housing in rural communities (where many roads were not even treated during this weather event)? Unlike the people with disabilities who were able to pick up the phone and ring Tom Clonan, my brother now 41, cannot speak, pick up a phone, dial a number, call for help, walk, feed or get himself a drink or change his own nappies – his intellectual age is 6 months to 1 year. Yet ‘disability advocates’ gung ho on independent living and wiping out ‘institutions’ insist even those with severe and profound needs should live an ‘ordinary life’ in an ‘ordinary place’ with ‘no special treatment’ – just because that’s what the majority of people with disabilities want for themselves.
A formal buddy system needs to be set up by HSE for all vulnerable persons where a designated person such as a neighbour can volunteer to check up if a carer doesn’t turn up it. It might simply mean making a quick phone call during the crisis or looking in for 10 minutes.
2/2 Once the HSE’s Time to Move On from Congregated Settings policy is fully implemented, the 76 residents who occupy ten houses (mainly large chalets) on my brother’s beautiful campus will be scattered here, there and everywhere in small houses of 3 or 4 with agency staff coming and going. Whereas during this storm they had a continuation of care thanks to a well staffed campus where nurses and carers could stay with them, in the future they will be in the very position those who contacted Tom Clonan were in this time around. Only unlike them, they won’t be able to call him or anyone. There are people with disabilities who fully rely on others for their survival – leaving cold food & drinks next to my brother’s bed would not work for the same reason it wouldn’t work with an infant.
No mention of other voluntary agencies that have been doing great work, the likes of Order of Malta, St Johns and Red cross, who mobilised vehicles and personnel all over the country during the bad weather! IT’s not just the civil defence you know!
Global warming causing Sudden Stratospheric Warming’s hasn’t really kicked off yet and when it does then these things will get more common and WORSE.
@Alois Irlmaier:
Please define “Global warming causing Sudden Stratospheric Warming’s” as even google struggle with that one.
I fully expect that the Gestapo will issue a curfew for a future weather event.
This will be the inaguration of the new Irish Communist State.
It is up to the government to make sure that there is enough of a supply of crack, mack, cocaine, heroin, alcohol etc for those who refuse shelter.
What a kip of a country, we are great for meddling in other peoples business but cant mind our own, I’m a pensioner &recently got a bill from my electric company for almost a thousand euros? I know I don’t owe that money as I live in a one bed apt & i’m seldom home, the bill was for eighty four days, The company are saying that I do owe the money so I asked them to prove to me that I owe them the money but they haven’t come back to me, My point is that there are a lot of unqualified people in jobs that they are not qualified to be in, In other words they are chancers, God help us & save us from the vultures
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