(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Soldiers opened fire on a group of youths who had been trying to erect a barrier in a bid to halt road traffic in the southern port city, wounding two of them, said the medical official. Barricades already blocked vehicles along the main thoroughfares of the city, a centre of almost three months of protests against the iron-fisted regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Aden was virtually paralysed, with shops, schools and government offices closed. The strike was also well-observed in the northern provinces of Lahij and Abyan, while student protesters took to the streets of Taez, a restive city in the southwest, residents said. But there were few signs of any interruption in the capital Sanaa, an AFP correspondent said. Protest committees have called for general strikes to demand "the fall of the regime" every Saturday and Wednesday in Yemen, which has been ruled by Saleh for more than three decades. Saleh gave a cool response to a plan drawn up by Gulf states for him to stand down, even as thousands of anti-regime protesters rallied in the capital on what they branded a "Last Chance Friday."
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