SANAA - Separatist militants clashed with the army in southern Yemen on Monday, killing one officer and wounding a second, as unrest sweeps across Yemen and protesters demand an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh's 32-year rule.
The fighting happened in the district of Habilayn, where secessionist sentiment runs high. Nasser al-Khabji, a leader in the separatist Southern Movement, told Reuters that more militants were joining the clashes.
"More separatist supporters are moving into the area, the situation is tense," he said.
Saleh, a U.S. ally against al-Qaida's Yemen-based wing, has failed to stop daily protests that have left 24 people dead. The protests have been taken up in the south, where clashes between have been most violent and where most deaths have occured.
Half Yemen's 23 million people own guns, 40 percent live on $2 a day or less and a third face chronic hunger. Protesters are angry at widespread corruption, youth unemployment is high and the country is riven with regional strife.
North and south Yemen united in 1990 and a civil war began four years later. Saleh's forces crushed the secessionists and reunited the country, but southerners complain that northerners take their resources while denying them political participation.
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