Woman dies in south Yemen protest

Observed by: Mr. Alaa Isam

A woman was run over and killed by a police vehicle and two other people were wounded in south Yemen on Thursday during a demonstration demanding the release of militants, witnesses and a medic said.

The woman was fatally injured when she was hit by the vehicle in Mukallah, the main town in Hadramawt province in the southeast of the country, when police intervened to disperse protesters, they said.

A second protester was wounded by gunfire and a third by tear gas, witnesses said.

A medical source confirmed that the dead woman and the two wounded had been taken to hospital in Mukallah.

During the demonstration, protesters chanted slogans demanding the release of jailed members of the secessionist Southern Movement.

In addition to grappling with an increasingly violent southern separatist movement, the Sanaa government is struggling against a growing presence of Al-Qaeda fighters in the south.

South Yemen was independent from the 1967 British withdrawal from Aden until the region united with the north in 1990. The south seceded in 1994, sparking a short-lived civil war that ended with it being overrun by northern troops.

Source: http://yhoo.it/gFkWLV