SANA, Yemen — Yemeni security forces fired tank and artillery shells at a restive southern city Friday, killing 14 people, including three women and a 9-year-old boy, a medical official said.
Violence has escalated in the Arab world’s poorest country throughout a nearly nine-month popular uprising seeking to oust autocratic President Ali Abdullah Saleh after 30 years in power.
In Friday’s bloodshed, troops from the Republican Guard, which is led by Saleh’s son and is a pillar of his rule, shelled two neighborhoods in the southern city of Taiz and fired at protesters in the city’s main square. Fourteen people were killed, said a medical official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Anti-government tribesmen also attacked security positions in Taiz on Friday, killing two soldiers and wounding eight others, the Defense Ministry said. The military blamed the attack on Islamists. The Associated Press
