Yemen: Ground Level Account

(Via the Telegraph)

On the other side of what the demonstrators have begun to call "Taghyir" or "Change" Square, others stripped off their jackets and advanced towards the ever more relentless gunfire, pointing towards their chests as if in an invitation to shoot.

As the carnage continued, killing 52 and wounding hundreds more, victims were brought to a nearby mosque that had been turned into makeshift hospital.

Photographs showed the dead, identity cards and miniatures of the Koran laid on their corpses, lain in rows across the carpeted floor on an inner prayer room.

One young boy, barefoot and dressed in an Arsenal football club T-shirt, had been shot just above the eye. Another photograph showed a veiled woman cradling the body of her young son, his arms outstretched as if in supplication.

In one video, a man holding the body of his dead brother is shown making a tearful telephone call to his mother to tell her, in a faltering voice, that her son is dead.

Nearly all the bodies in the photographs had bullet wounds either in the forehead, neck or in the back of the head. There seems little doubt that this was the work of trained marksmen.

Yet President Saleh, while expressing his sorrow, claimed that the gunmen were either the demonstrators themselves or irate residents neighbouring the university who had grown tired of the noise of the protests – a claim denied by the residents themselves.

The opposition coalition at the forefront of the protests accused Mr Saleh, a key US ally against al-Qaeda, of perpetrating crimes against humanity.

"It is a massacre," said opposition spokesman Mohammed al-Sabri. "This is part of a criminal plan to kill off the protesters, and the president and his relatives are responsible for the bloodshed."

Much of the sniper fire emanated from a building allegedly owned by a regional governor close to President Saleh, further evidence, the opposition said, of the regime's involvement in the killings.

Video footage showed a masked man crouching behind a balustrade on the building's roof.

As the gunfire continued unabated, a group of protesters stormed the rooftop, braving gunfire to capture 10 of the snipers – seven of whom were said to have possessed government identification papers.

One of the suspected snipers was dragged into the streets, where he was beaten and clubbed by protesters, while a second was allegedly flung off the edge of the building.

Ye gods.