One killed and 14 wounded in Yemen separatist violence

Source: AFP

(AFP) – 13 hours ago

SANAA — A policeman was crushed to death in south Yemen on Monday, amid a strike and protests by secessionists in which 11 policemen and three schoolchildren were also wounded by gunfire, witnesses said.
The latest unrest followed a weekend of deaths and other violence in the formerly socialist South Yemen, amid growing moves for independence from the traditionalist North.
In Monday's violence, a police patrol car ran over a policeman and 11 other law officers were wounded during a shootout with protesters in the city of Daleh, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Sanaa, witnesses said.
They said that three schoolchildren were also wounded in Daleh when an armed protester, angry that a secondary school stayed open during a strike called by separatists, opened fire inside the school.
Businesses and shops were shuttered in Daleh and the southern city of Zanjibar for a general strike called by the secessionist "Peaceful Movement for the Liberation of the South."
The strike was called to spotlight the separatists' demands ahead of an international donors conference on Yemen that opens in London on Wednesday.
Shops and businesses also remained closed in Jabiline and Al-Houta in Lahaj province north of Aden, the former capital of the South and its largest city.
In a weekend of violence, three people were killed by police gunfire on Sunday in Daleh. Thirty people were arrested on Saturday, following clashes between police and protesters in Al-Houta.
South Yemen became an independent state following the end of British rule in 1967. It was reunited with the North in 1990, when Yemen became the Arabian Peninsula's only republic.
Southerners seceded again in 1994, sparking a short-lived civil war that ended with the region overrun by northern troops.
Southerners who complain of discrimination and a lack of financial aid stage frequent demonstrations demanding either increased autonomy or independence from the north.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula.