(AhlulBayt News Agency) - The protests have mushroomed since crowds gathered Friday to celebrate the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after an 18-day revolt fueled by similar grievances. Yemen is one of several countries in the Middle East feeling the aftershocks of pro-reform uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
Police used truncheons to stop protesters, many of them university students, from reaching the capital's central Hada Square. Witnesses said plainclothes policemen wielding daggers and sticks also joined security forces in driving the protesters back.
The Interior Ministry called on people not to heed "suspicious calls for chaos" and to avoid rallies that "obstruct ... daily life."
Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, also postponed a trip to Washington scheduled for next month due to the "circumstances in the country," the state news agency reported.
Much is at stake in Yemen - a deeply troubled nation strategically located at the mouth of the Red Sea and next door to the world's largest oil reserves. Saleh's weak government is already under pressure from a southern separatist movement and disaffected tribesmen around the country.
The U.S., however, is most worried about an al-Qaida offshoot that has taken root in Yemen's mountains in the last few years and used it as a haven to plot attacks beyond the country's borders, including the failed attempt to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner in December 2009 by an attacker with a bomb sewn into his underwear.
Saleh - in power for three decades - is quietly cooperating with the U.S. in efforts to battle the al-Qaida franchise, but his government exercises limited control in tribal areas. .
The country's security forces, however, are already stretched thin on two other fronts: Since 2004, they have struggled to contain a serious rebellion in the north by members of the Zaidi sect of Shia Islam who complain of neglect and discrimination. At the same time, forces are clashing with a secessionist movement in the south.
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