SANAA, April 10, (Agencies): Dozens of anti-regime demonstrators were shot in clashes with security forces, sparking charges of “massacre”, as Yemen’s worried Gulf neighbours gathered in Riyadh to work out a transition plan.
The Gulf Cooperation Council on Sunday urged embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to ensure a peaceful transition to his deputy, GCC chief Abdullatif al-Zayani said after a meeting in Riyadh.
The GCC — which groups Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia with Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates — appealed to Saleh to “announce the transfer of his powers to the vice president,” Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, said Zayani.
It also called for the formation of “a government of national unity led by the opposition” which would be responsible for “establishing a constitution and organising elections,” he said.
Saleh on Friday rejected such a proposal for his exit made by Qatar’s prime minister as a “blatant interference in Yemeni affairs.”
Tens of thousands of people took part in demonstrations in Sanaa as well as Taez and Ibb, both south of the capital, and in the Red Sea city of Hudaydah to condemn Saturday’s bloodshed, witnesses said.
The protesters shouted slogans condemning the “massacre” and carried the flags of several other Arab countries, including Qatar which has come out vocally in support of the departure of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
At least one anti-regime protester died after Saturday’s clashes, while three other people were killed, including an intelligence officer and a soldier, in violence in Abyan province, an al-Qaeda stronghold in south Yemen.

The protester was shot and fatally wounded when security forces using live fire mowed down dozens of demonstrators in Sanaa and Taez, said medics at a makeshift field hospital in the flashpoint city of Taez.
More than 40 protesters were wounded by live gunfire in clashes in Taez between security forces and demonstrators calling for Saleh’s ouster that raged deep into Saturday night, medics said.
The confrontations were fuelled by anger after four demonstrators were shot dead in Taez on Friday. A week earlier, 17 demonstrators were gunned down in the city in clashes with security forces on April 3-4, according to medics.
In Sanaa, security forces shot and wounded 30 people on Saturday, while 80 others suffered injuries from beatings with batons, medics and demonstrators said.
Another 1,200 people needed treatment for tear-gas inhalation, said a medical team set up by mostly young protesters who have staged a sit-in at a square near Sanaa University since February.
In other violence in Yemen on Saturday, an intelligence officer was killed in a drive-by shooting outside his home in the Loder area of Abyan, doctors and security sources said.

His son was also wounded when two men on a motorbike opened fire on Colonel Hussein Gharama and sped off, according to witnesses, who identified the assailants as al-Qaeda members.
And a soldier and a militant were killed in a clash between security forces and suspected al-Qaeda fighters in Jaar, also in Abyan, a local security official told AFP.
Army artillery pounded a suspected al-Qaeda hideout in Jaar for several hours on Saturday after the military urged local residents to evacuate the area. Residents later returned to their homes after the guns went silent.
A source close to the militants told AFP the army had withdrawn after two of its gunmen were wounded in the shelling.
The United States, which has counted on Saleh in its battle against al-Qaeda, on Friday urged all sides in Yemen to engage in an “urgently needed dialogue” on a political transition.
Washington has expressed concern that al-Qaeda militants based in lawless regions of Yemen have taken advantage of the political unrest as Sanaa eased the pressure on the Islamists.

Bahrain
Two Bahraini Shiite activists detained in the wake of anti-regime protests have died in detention, the Gulf kingdom’s interior ministry said on Sunday.
Ali Issa Saqer, 31, died at the hands of prison security guards after “causing chaos in detention”, police said in a statement posted on the interior ministry’s Twitter page.
“Security men had to intervene to restore security ... but he resisted, forcing them to engage him, which resulted in him receiving several wounds,” it said.
He died in hospital, police said, without specifying whether he was shot or had suffered other injuries.
Police said Saqer was arrested on suspicion of having killed policemen by running them over with a car.
The ministry said another detainee, Zakaraya Rashed Hassan, 40, arrested on April 2 for “inciting hatred against the regime and spreading fabricated news”, had been “found dead” in his prison cell.
A post-mortem examination showed sickle cell disease was the cause of death.
Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, said a leading opposition figure and rights activist, Abdul Hadi al-Khawaja, was beaten up and arrested on Saturday in Manama.

“The brutal beating of rights activist Abdul Hadi al-Khawaja by police during a warrantless pre-dawn raid adds cruelty on top of illegality,” Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at HRW, said in a statement.
In late March, the interior ministry said 24 people, four of them policemen, were killed in clashes during the month-long protests, led by Bahrain’s majority Shiites, calling for democratic reform in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.
Bahrain’s security forces crushed protests on the streets on March 16, two days after a joint armoured contingent from its Sunni Gulf neighbours rolled in across a causeway linking the archipelago state to Saudi Arabia.
Security forces razed Manama’s Pearl Square monument where demonstrators were camped before being violently evicted. The Shiite-led opposition says about 400 people have since been arrested.
Tanks remain deployed at entry points to Manama’s financial district, which had been another focal point of protests, although a curfew has been rolled back and some semblance of normality has returned to the capital.

Syria
Syrian government forces killed at least four people and wounded 17 when they strafed a residential area of the coastal town of Banias with gunfire for hours on Sunday, witnesses told AFP.
A Syrian security officer was later killed and another was wounded when their patrol was ambushed in the northwestern coastal town, the official SANA news agency reported.
The latest deadly violence came one day after mourners in the southern town of Daraa, epicentre of more than three weeks of pro-democracy protests, buried around 20 demonstrators killed by security forces.
In Banias, the civilian toll was at least four dead and 17 wounded on Sunday from shooting by security forces in the neighbourhood of Ras al-Nabee, where the Al-Rahman mosque has been a focal point of anti-regime demonstrations.

“The army and security forces and gunmen besieged the town from all sides and fired without interruption for several hours,” a university professor told AFP.
“(President) Bashar al-Assad is sending us a message: punish those who dare demand freedom with death,” he said.
The gunfire came from the Alawite neighbourhood of Al-Quz, two witnesses said, with one adding that it was “a real massacre with snipers shooting to kill.”
A rights activist said the shots were aimed at the mosque and left “four dead and 15 wounded.”
State news agency SANA said that a security officer was killed and another critically wounded in apparent retaliation.
“At 4:00 pm, an army unit between Latakia and Tartus was ambushed by an armed group by the roadside in trees and buildings,” the agency quoted an official as saying.
“One officer was killed and another critically wounded, and several soldiers were also wounded. The armed forces are hunting down the elements of this armed group to arrest them and bring them to justice.”

Banias residents on Saturday had reportedly agreed to stage a rooftop protest at 10:00 pm to call for the fall of the regime, but by 8:30 all land lines and cell phones were cut.
A witness said residents had set up checkpoints to guard their neighbourhoods against unrest.
All of the witnesses and activists who spoke to AFP requested anonymity, citing security concerns.
Five people had already been wounded earlier on Sunday in Banias in a drive-by shooting reportedly by plainclothes government agents in the Mediterranean town, according to a witness.
Seven cars “carrying people sent by the regime arrived in front of the Abu Bakr al-Sidiq mosque and their occupants opened fire” during morning prayers, the witness said.
The perpetrators quickly took flight, although witnesses were able to record the licence plates of some of their vehicles.

“The people behind this shooting are regime thugs and their names are known to us,” the witness said, and added that peaceful demonstrations had also been held in Banias on Saturday afternoon.
Anti-regime demonstrations and clashes with security forces raged across the country on Friday leaving 28 dead, including 26 in Daraa, according to an updated toll by six Syrian rights groups.
And on Saturday security forces shot at protesters in Daraa, wounding two people, an activist said, as a huge crowd buried the dead from the previous day.
The organisations on Sunday voiced their “concern at the determination of Syrian authorities to continue violating essential rights and freedoms.”
An unprecedented opposition movement erupted in Syria on March 15 challenging the regime of Assad, who has been in power since 2000, to introduce major political reforms.
Assad, who has made only one public address since the start of unrest, on Sunday told Bulgaria’s visiting foreign minister that “Syria was on the road to general reforms,” SANA reported.
Since the political unrest erupted, the authorities have been pinning responsibility for protest-related violence on “armed groups,” and the interior minister warned on Saturday that he would act firmly.
Assad last month ordered a legal committee to draft new legislation to replace emergency laws, in force since 1963, which give security services great leeway to crush dissent.

Egypt
Egypt’s public prosecutor on Sunday ordered ousted president Hosni Mubarak and his sons to be questioned over violence against protesters and alleged corruption, MENA state news agency reported.
The announcement came after the broadcast of an audio tape in which the former president defended his reputation and after weeks of mounting protests calling for him to be put on trial.
“The public prosecutor Abdel Magid Mahmud decided today to ask for the questioning of former president Hosni Mubarak and his sons Gamal and Alaa,” the official news agency reported.
Mubarak and his sons will be questioned about allegations and legal complaints that they were “connected to the crimes of assault against protesters, leading to deaths and injuries,” MENA said.
He would also be quizzed on allegations of graft, it added.
An estimated 800 people were killed in clashes with police and the former president’s supporters during weeks of protests that led to Mubarak’s resignation on February 11.
Sunday’s announcement came hours after pan-Arab television network Al-Arabiya aired Mubarak’s first comments since he stepped down following weeks of anti-regime protests.

In the audio message, the 82-year-old complained he was the victim of a smear campaign.
He pledged his assistance in a probe of his family’s foreign assets, but his defiance in threatening lawsuits against the media angered Egyptians who have been pressing for his trial.
MENA reported that the interior ministry has been asked to undertake the necessary security measures so Mubarak and his sons can be summoned.
After he resigned, Mubarak and his family moved to a residence in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, and although he faced a travel ban, his relative freedom remained a thorn in the side of the military rulers.
Weekly protests demanding Mubarak’s trial have attracted tens of thousands and eventually led to a deadly clash with soldiers early on Saturday morning after they tried to clear an overnight demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Defiant protesters, who accused the military of complicity with the former president, remain in the square although the military had pledged to disperse them, raising fears of further clashes.
The protesters, who blocked the square with a charred army truck, barbed wire and beams, chanted slogans against military chief Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who has been in charge since Mubarak’s ouster.

“The people demand the toppling of the field marshal,” they chanted, after spending a nervous night waiting for the army to follow through with its threat to enforce a three-hour pre-dawn curfew.
The military acknowledged that one person died on Saturday night from a gunshot wound but denied it used force or live ammunition to disperse the protesters.
Despite its threat to remove the protesters, whom it called outlaws, the military backed down on early Sunday morning in a sign that it wished to avoid further confrontations.
The clash has put the military on the defensive.
It is widely popular for not cracking down on protesters when it was called to the streets during the revolt that ousted Mubarak, but has faced increasing criticism for not putting Mubarak in the dock and for alleged rights abuses.
The military has announced the appointment of a panel to investigate the former president, but has been criticised for delays in holding him and other former regime officials to account.
The judiciary has accelerated its probes and remands of former regime officials.
After announcing that Mubarak would be summoned for questioning, news broke that his former prime minister Ahmed Nazif has been detained for 15 days on suspicion of corruption.
Mubarak’s son Gamal, once seen as the anointed heir, has already been summoned by a panel for questioning on alleged corruption.
The same justice ministry panel has ordered Mubarak’s former chief of staff Zakaria Azmi to be detained for 15 days, also on corruption charges.

Libya
A high-ranking African Union delegation arrived in Libya on Sunday to try to negotiate a truce between Muammar Gaddafi’s forces and rebels seeking to oust him, an AFP reporter said.
The peace mission came as NATO warplanes were in action against Gaddafi loyalists in the stricken port city of Misrata after regime forces killed at least 11 people there over the weekend, rebels said.
The African mediators were welcomed by Gaddafi supporters holding the veteran Libyan leader’s picture and waving the green flags of his regime.
Presidents Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania, Mali’s Amadou Toumani Toure, Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo, Jacob Zuma of South Africa, and Ugandan Foreign Minister Henry Oryem Okello, representing Yoweri Museveni, flew in to Mitiga airport near Tripoli.
They joined the embattled Gaddafi for a photocall outside his Bedouin tent in his Bab al-Aziziya compound before being driven by minibus to greet a crowd of his supporters some 200 metres (yards) away and then leaving for an undisclosed destination.
The AU team is due to fly to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, 1,000 kms (600 miles) east of Tripoli, later on Sunday in its effort to broker a truce in the deadly conflict.
The opposition has already said it rejects any ceasefire that would mean Gaddafi or his sons remain in power.

Earlier, the mediators reiterated their appeal for “an immediate end to all hostilities” and proposed a transition period to adopt reforms in the insurrection-hit country.
The NATO operation’s commander confirmed that NATO warplanes had destroyed 11 regime tanks on the road to the eastern Libyan town of Ajdabiya and another 14 tanks near Misrata.
“The situation in Ajdabiya, and Misrata in particular, is desperate for those Libyans who are being brutally shelled by the regime,” said Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard.
“To help protect these civilians we continue to strike these forces hard, with 11 tanks destroyed today as they approached Ajdabiya, and 14 tanks destroyed earlier this morning in the outskirts of Misrata,” he said.

On the battlefield, rebels said on Sunday they had captured 15 Algerian mercenaries and killed another three during fierce fighting in Ajdabiya the previous day.
Medics also said at least 12 rebels were killed in and around Ajdabiya over the weekend.
Officials at Benghazi’s Jala hospital said it had received nine “martyrs” from the fighting and 14 wounded people, and a doctor at Al-Hawwara hospital said it had received three dead and three wounded.
Air strikes on Misrata came on Sunday morning, a rebel spokesman in the besieged town told AFP, calling the raids “a marked improvement in NATO intervention.”
“They began the raids yesterday on the Gaddafi forces in the northwest of the town and near the centre of Misrata,” said the spokesman.
“In the morning, there were new raids but we are not able to verify the targets,” he said, adding eight rebels were killed by pro-Gaddafi forces and 22 others were wounded on Saturday.
A doctor at Misrata hospital gave AFP the same death toll for Saturday, saying they included civilians, while putting the number of wounded at 25.

The doctor said the hospital had received three bodies on Sunday, two rebels and a civilian, adding it was possible there could be more fatalities at other medical facilities.
“Clearly the situation in Ajdabiya is desperate and Gaddafi forces are attacking the town with heavy weapons,” a NATO official in Brussels told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Bouchard said in a statement: “We are hitting the regime logistics facilities as well as their heavy weapons because we know Gaddafi is finding it hard to sustain his attacks on civilians.”
Loud explosions rocked Ajdabiya for a second day on Sunday, as rebels advanced cautiously after suffering a major reverse at the hands of loyalists.
The alliance had already taken out 15 tanks near Misrata on Friday and Saturday, bringing to 29 the total number of tanks destroyed around Libya’s third largest city in the past three days.
Western strikes against regime forces began on March 19 under a UN mandate to protect the population after Gaddafi unleashed his security forces to quell pro-democracy protests.
The United States handed control of the operation to NATO on March 31.
Libyan rebels have criticised NATO in recent days, accusing the alliance of failing to protect the people of Misrata.

But NATO says it is picking up the pace of air strikes.
Rebel spokesman Shamsiddin Abdulmolah told AFP in Benghazi that 18 men they captured near Ajdabiya were not carrying identification, but “they said they were Algerian and they had Algerian accents.”
“They were claiming to be selling hashish... and they had hashish with them. This is the whole crazy thing about it,” he said.
He also said several Algerian ID cards and passports were found in a nearby building in Ajdabiya.
The Algerian foreign ministry categorically denied the charge, its spokesman Amar Belani told AFP.
Abdulmolah said the group of 18 were led into the frontline town by a local resident allied with Gaddafi’s regime, who was also captured, adding that all the detainees were being treated well.
He accused Algeria of backing Gaddafi and of “turning a blind eye” to the mercenaries flowing into Libya. The rebels have long accused Gaddafi of using hired guns from Chad and Niger.
An Associated Press photographer named by the agency as 35-year-old Indian Altaf Qadri has gone missing near Ajdabiya, AP said on Sunday.
“We are concerned about his safety and are taking appropriate steps to locate him,” it said in a statement.

UAE
Police in the United Arab Emirates have arrested a second human rights activist, after seizing a prominent blogger last week, the activist’s colleague said on Sunday.
“Fahad Salem al-Shehhi, 38, was arrested yesterday at 7 pm in his flat in Ajman,” said the colleague, who did not want to be named, adding that Shehhi was a member of the UAE online political forum Hewar which is blocked in the country.
On Friday police arrested Ahmed Mansoor, another UAE national who was involved with the Hewar forum, his family said.
Dubai Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim confirmed Mansoor’s arrest, which he said was requested by prosecutors in connection with a criminal case, the National newspaper reported.
An Interior Ministry spokesman in Dubai could not be reached for comment.
The UAE, a federation of seven emirates headed by ruling families, does not allow direct elections or political parties.
The Arab world has been rocked by a wave of pro-democracy protests which toppled Egypt’s and Tunisia’s leaders and sparked demonstrations in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
The UAE, the world’s third largest oil exporter, and Qatar, the world’s top liquefied natural gas exporter, are seen as the least vulnerable to political unrest because of generous government spending programmes.

A minimum of two percent of the UAE population will be nominated to vote or participate in an election to its quasi-parliamentary body, the Federal National Council (FNC), this year, though an UAE official has said the percentage could be raised.
New York-based Human Rights Watch called for Mansoor’s release in a statement on Sunday.
“We believe the detention of Ahmed Mansoor is aimed at scaring and intimidating others in the UAE who may wish to make public their demands for democratic reforms,” the group’s Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement.
“While other governments in the region are discussing democratic reforms, the UAE government is digging in its heels and sticking to outmoded repressive ploys.”
UAE nationals make up about 15 percent of the country’s estimated 5 million people. The country has one of the world’s highest gross domestic product per capita incomes at over $47,000 per year.
Analysts say the most likely sites of unrest in the UAE are its less-developed northern emirates, whose citizens have benefited least from the vast oil wealth in the capital Abu Dhabi and Dubai’s trade and property-fuelled development.
In March, state media said the UAE would invest $1.6 billion on infrastructure in its less developed regions.

Aide
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama is sending a foreign policy aide to key Gulf allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates this week amid concern over the turmoil sweeping the Middle East.
National Security Advisor Tom Donilon will leave on Monday on a three-day trip during which he will meet Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh and Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan in Abu Dhabi, the White House said.
“The National Security Advisor’s visit underscores the importance of our relationship with these two key partners,” a written statement said.
Saudi Arabia’s intervention last month in Bahrain amid Shiite-led opposition violence has exposed festering political differences between Riyadh and the United States over the revolts rocking the Arab world.
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates held talks in Riyadh on Wednesday with King Abdullah, with both sides concerned as well by Iranian intentions in the region and spiraling unrest in Yemen.
Boosted by the arrival of a Saudi-led Gulf forces contingent, Bahraini security forces smashed a month-old protest mid-March in central Manama by Shiites, leaving three protesters and two police dead.
The surprise Saudi decision to lead a regional mission into the strife-torn and strategic kingdom ruled by a Sunni minority also reflected the deep shadow cast by Iran in the instability testing US-allied leaders across the Gulf.

Washington appeared to have had little if any advance notice of what was a potentially embarrassing move for the United States, which has led a prolonged effort to prod Bahrain towards political reforms.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states have traded accusations with Iran of meddling and interference, especially over Bahrain, which lies off the eastern Saudi coast and is home to the US Fifth Fleet.
“We already have evidence that the Iranians are trying to exploit the situation in Bahrain and we also have evidence that they’re talking about what they can do to create problems elsewhere,” Gates said after Wednesday’s meeting in Riyadh.
King Abdullah’s return home in February after months of treatment abroad for a back ailment came amid mounting international anger over bloodshed in the kingdom’s southern neighbor Yemen.