Pro-regime activists armed with daggers and batons clashed violently with students Tuesday in Sanaa before police intervened. According to AFP, five people were wounded.
Some 1,000 students had spent a second night camped at a square near Sanaa university, called Al-Huriya Square, where they on Tuesday erected a huge tent. The crowd swelled to some 4,000 and as the protesters demanding Ali Saleh's departure moved Tuesday morning from the square close to where the president's loyalists are bunkered down, the group attacked them with daggers and batons.
The students, some of whom were also armed with batons, responded. Three students and two of Saleh's loyalists were hurt before police dispersed the crowd, AFP said.
Meanwhile, three soldiers and two civilians were killed in clashes between Yemeni security forces and al-Qaeda in Marib. The clash resulted in the arrest of a senior al Qaeda activist named Muhammad Abdullah Muawada, according to the Yemeni Defense Ministry, which quoted the Governor of Marib, Sheikh Naji al-Zaidi. It is reported that soldiers at a security checkpoint stopped a car where Muawada was with a number of al-Qaeda militants. They asked for their identity cards and in response they opened fire.
