Scores hurt as troops storm Yemen campus

The Yemeni government escalated its efforts to stop mass protests calling for the president’s ousting, with soldiers firing rubber bullets and tear gas at students camped at a university in the capital in a raid that left at least 98 people wounded, officials said.

The army stormed the Sanaa University campus hours after thousands of inmates rioted at the central prison in the capital, taking a dozen guards hostage and calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.

At least one prisoner was killed and 80 people were wounded as the guards fought to control the situation, police said.

Yemen has been rocked by weeks of protests against Saleh, inspired by recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia that drove out those nations’ leaders.

Mr Saleh, a key US ally in the campaign against al Qaida, has been in power for 32 years.

In a sign that the protests are gaining traction, graffiti calling for Mr Saleh to step down surfaced in his birthplace, the village of Sanhan, for the first time since the protests began.

Students at Sanaa University have been sleeping on campus since mid-February, shortly after the start of the protests calling for Mr Saleh to step down.

Medical officials said many of the 98 people hurt at the university were in serious condition.

“It’s a massacre,” said opposition spokesman Muhammad Qahtan. “It is a crime by security troops against students engaged in a peaceful sit-in.”

Demonstrations also continued elsewhere in the country. In the southern port city of Aden, a crowd of women joined a demonstration after a young protester was shot in the head and critically wounded during a rally there the previous day.

Tens of thousands took to the streets in the Ibb province, calling on the government to bring to justice those responsible for a deadly attack there on Sunday.

Opposition activists blamed “government thugs” who descended on protesters camped out on a main square. One person was killed in that violence and 53 people were hurt.

Even before Yemen was hit by the wave of protests, the country was growing increasingly chaotic with a resurgent al Qaida, a separatist movement in the south and a Shiite rebellion occasionally flaring in the north.

Seeking to head off the protests, Mr Saleh called for national dialogue after meetings on Monday with the country’s top political and security chiefs.

The state-run news agency said the conference would be held tomorrow and would include thousands of representatives from across Yemen’s political spectrum.

But opposition leader Yassin Said Numan said there would be no dialogue unless Mr Saleh agreed to step down by the year’s end.

Mr Saleh’s recent pledge not to run for re-election in 2013 has failed to quell the protests.