YEMEN: Hundreds wounded as protesters attacked.
Government supporters armed with sticks, knives and guns attacked thousands of protesters Wednesday, wounding hundreds in an increasingly violent crackdown on demonstrations calling for the country’s longtime president to step down, witnesses said.
After nearly a month of protests, about 50 demonstrators have been killed by security forces or paid thugs, said Amal al-Bashi of the Yemen Center for Human Rights.
Fed up with corruption, poverty and a lack of political freedom, the protesters have demanded that President Ali Abdullah Saleh leave office after 32 years in power.
EGYPT: Gas shipments to Israel resume amid concerns over deal.
Egypt resumed natural-gas shipments to Israel on Wednesday for the first time since the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak.
But many here remain worried about the long-term prospects for the $2.5 billion export deal, which when signed in 2005 was touted as a sign of warming relations with Israel. The agreement could soon turn into an uncomfortable diplomatic dispute with Egypt’s new government.
TUNISIA: Algeria provides $100 million in aid.
Oil- and gas-rich Algeria has given Tunisia $100 million in financial aid to support its North African neighbor struggling toward democracy after an uprising ousted the country’s longtime autocratic leader.
The official TAP news agency said Tunisian Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi announced the aid Wednesday, a day after returning from his first trip abroad, to Algeria and Morocco.
SYRIA: Undercover officers break up protest.
Plainclothes security officers armed with clubs dispersed about 100 protesters in the capital of Damascus on Wed nesday, beating some and detaining at least 30 people, witnesses and rights groups said.
It was the second time Syrian forces have violently dispersed a small protest this week. The protesters had gathered outside the Interior Ministry calling for the release of political prisoners.
IRAQ: State Department wants funding spared.
Eight years of work to stabilize the country could go to waste if U.S. lawmakers gut funding to train Iraqi police forces after American troops leave the country, a senior diplomat said Wednesday.
The comments by State Department Assistant Secretary William Brownfield came on a tense day in Baghdad, where political leaders raised the specter of sectarian tensions in Bahrain boiling over to Iraq.
U.S. combat troops are set to exit at the end of the year, leaving the training of Iraqi security forces in the hands of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The State Department has asked for $1 billion to assist Iraq’s police and legal system in 2012, but Brownfield said it is uncertain whether the money will be approved by Congress, which appears more focused this year on tightening spending than on Iraq’s stability.
On Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he fears that riots in Bahrain between mostly Sunni security forces and Shiite protesters will inflame sectarian violence in the Mideast.
His statement was released a few hours after thousands of supporters answered the call of Shiite anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to gather in Baghdad and Basra to protest Saudi forces who deployed to Bahrain to help the besieged Sunni-led government.
Iraq’s highest Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, also called on Bahrain’s government to cease the crackdown on protesters, according to a spokesman.
Denver Post wire services
