Protests Follow Friday Prayers
The New York Times reports:
In what has become something of a weekly appointment for displaying disaffection with unresponsive governments, thousands of people poured into the streets across the Arab world to protest after noon prayers on Friday. There were only scattered reports of violence outside of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s harsh crackdown on demonstrators in Libya, with the worst of it in Yemen.
Some protests — in Yemen and Bahrain — stepped up pressure on leaders who have appeared increasingly vulnerable in the weeks since demonstrators toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt.
Others, in Iraq, Jordan and Egypt, were pushing their governments for change, rather than an overhaul of their leadership. In Iraq, demonstrators are demanding better government services; in Egypt — where there is a new military government — and Jordan, protesters were pressuring their leaders to speed up democratic changes.
In Yemen, government officials and a Shiite rebel group agreed that there had been violence, but their accounts of what led to the clash and the number of casualties diverged sharply.
The rebels said that the military fired artillery at peaceful protesters in the northern city of Harf Sufyan, killing two and injuring one. The protest, by Houthi rebels calling for the immediate ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, attracted thousands of people and was passing near a military post when the shelling occurred, said Abu Hashem, a spokesman for the group.
But the government said the rebels had attempted to storm the post and that the ensuing firefight left several people injured, but not dead.
Click here to read more.
