Anti, pro-Saleh forces clash as fighting erupts across Yemen

Yemen's troubles seem to be far from over Clashes between forces loyal to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and dissident tribesmen in the country’s second-largest city Taez killed five people on Thursday, medics said. “Five people were killed and 20 wounded,” one medic told AFP.
Witnesses said the fighting erupted early in the day as loyalist troops tried to storm the city center, a stronghold of armed tribesmen who have pledged support to the protest movement against Saleh’s 33-year rule.
On Wednesday, thousands of residents fled Taez when government forces shelled the city, killing one person, and two guards were shot dead in the south by Islamist militants, and activist and an official said.
The violence raged despite longtime Saleh’s agreement to step down. He has been the target of months of protests, and some units of his military have joined the rebels.
Government forces began shelling Taez Tuesday and continued Wednesday, according to activist Nouh al-Wafi. He said three people were wounded and several shops were destroyed.
Taez is a hotbed of the opposition to Saleh.
The city is often shelled by the army in response to hit-and-run attacks by armed tribesmen and soldiers who support the anti-government protesters.
In the southern province of Aden, a security official said gunmen opened fire on a security officer of the special forces while driving in the Khor Maksar town, killing two of his guards. The officer escaped unharmed.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with security rules, said the attackers were believed to be Al-Qaeda-linked militants. Yemen has one of the world’s most active Qaeda branches.
On the political front, according to Yemeni sources the JMP bloc handed acting president Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi two lists of the proposed ministerial portfolios. Sources also told 'Arabstoday' that the lists, A and B, include 17 ministerial portfolios that took into account the distribution of sovereign ministries, the Interior, Ministry of Defence (MoD), Media, Foreign, Finance and Oil Ministries to be distributed between the two main political powers in the state.    
Hadi in turn handed the lists to the ruling General People's Congress (GPC) party to select one of them and leave the opposition parties the other. The Congress was reported to require a day for the deliberations.  
It is expected that the ruling party in Yemen and the opposition will have two rounds of meetings throughout Thursday and Friday to announce the selected portfolios and submit the selection to the head of the cabinet Mohamed Salim Basindwa, who will in his submit them to Hadi.  
Adding to Yemen's woes, tens of thousands of Yemenis demonstrated in Aden Wednesday on the 44th anniversary of independence of South Yemen from Britain and called for secession. South and North Yemen merged under Saleh in 1990.
Also, thousands demonstrated in the southern town of Ibb, activist Ahmed Aqil said.
The demonstrators called for Saleh to be put on trial for alleged corruption and killing of protesters during the nine-month uprising.
Saleh signed a US-backed power transfer deal, brokered by neighboring Gulf countries, last week in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. It transfers power to his vice president Hadi and grants Saleh immunity from prosecution.
Meanwhile, thousands of Sunni Islamists rallied Wednesday in the Yemeni capital protesting against the alleged siege of a religious school by Shiite rebels in the north.
The Huthi rebels attacked the Salafist Dar al-Hadith institute in the rebel stronghold of Saada, Sunni extremists said, adding that hundreds of students, including Westerners, and their families are caught inside.
A tribal source said Sunday that 20 were killed and 70 others wounded in attacks on the institute in the village of Dammaj.
According to Mohammad al-Ammari, the spokesman of the rally, at least seven thousand people, including women and children, are under siege in Dammaj.
"They are facing daily bombings by the Huthis and lack food and medicines," Ammari said.
He said at least 26 people were killed since the beginning of the blockade including at least two Americans, a French citizen, a Russian and a number of Indonesians and Malaysians.
He accused the Shiite rebels of wanting to build a Shiite state in northern Yemen.
The head of the institute, Sheikh Yehya Al-Hajuri, who remains in Dammaj, urged his followers in a written statement distributed at the rally to launch "jihad (holy war) against the Huthi Rafida (rejectionists)," using a term coined by Saudi Salafists to describe Shiites.
Huthi rebels consider the Salafist institute a preaching centre.
Asked by AFP, rebels’ representative in Sanaa, Khaled Al-Madani, insisted that the gunmen were "stopping the supply of arms" but not laying siege to the institute.
He accused the institute of "hosting armed men who fire at our brothers", stressing that "Dar al-Hadith is at the forefront of calls for sectarian sedition."
Huthi rebels are Zaidi Shiites who complain of marginalisation by the Sanaa government. Thousands have been killed since a rebellion began in 2004. A cease-fire was reached in February last year.
The rebels are said to be close to Iran.