SANAA: Around 30 prisoners escaped after a bomb explosion at a prison in southern Yemen on Thursday, police said, identifying the fugitives as sympathizers of a secessionist movement.
They said a dispute broke out at a police post next to the jail between policemen and sympathizers of the breakaway movement arrested for having taken part in a protest in Daleh, 280 kilometers from Sanaa.
The detained protesters hurled a bomb, according to police, who said two policemen and three of the demonstrators were wounded. About 30 of those just arrested managed to escape in the mayhem.
Members of the movement for the independence of south Yemen told AFP the bomb was thrown by police.
Elsewhere on Thursday, police shot dead one protester and wounded five others in the nearby city of Radfan as they opened fire to disperse a demonstration led by southern separatists, according to the secessionists.
Witnesses said the demonstrators, some of whom were armed, carried flags of the former South Yemen.
Pro-independence protests have multiplied in the south, especially on Thursdays, the start of the Muslim weekend, amid a worsening economic situation in Yemen and charges of discrimination in favor of northerners.
On March 27, policemen opened fire in Daleh on the funeral procession for a Southern Movement member killed by police gunfire a week earlier, wounding 28 mourners, the movement said.
The man was to have been buried a week before but authorities prevented his body from being released from hospital, as they wanted the burial to take place at night rather than daylight to avoid protests.
South Yemen was independent from 1967 until 1990 when it united with the north. The south seceded in 1994, sparking a short-lived conflict that ended when the south was overrun by northern troops.
In a message to Arab leaders who held a summit in Libya last week, former southern president Ali Salam Al-Baid called for outside intervention "to stop the massacre of our people."
"We ask for the formation of a commission of inquiry into the situation in occupied southern Yemen," he said.
