President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, after serving as a lieutenant colonel in the army. He had been part of the conspiracy that bumped off his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, in the usual tiresome military coup, and he has maintained power by keeping Yemen's many tribes fighting with each other, rather than uniting to string him up. ...
has spread Monday to the Shiite north of Yemen, while tens of thousands of people staged a sit-in in the capital Sanaa and a protester was killed by police in Aden in the south.
"Tens of thousands of people attended a march in Sa'ada (north) to call for the fall of the regime at the call of (Zaidi rebel leader) Abdul Malek al-Houthi and the Joint Forum," parliamentary opposition , told AFP one of the organizers.
He said the protesters have proclaimed, during the march, their support for the protesters who continue to demonstrate in Sana'a, Aden and other Yemeni cities since February 16 to demand the change of the regime.
The Shiite Zaidi rebels had proclaimed, in a statement issued Saturday, his support to protests across the country calling for radical reform and the resignation of President-for-Life Saleh, in power for 32 years.
In February, government forces and Iranian catspaws signed a cease-fire in northern Yemen, after the deteriorating situation on the border with Soddy Arabia, raising fears of the kaboom of regional conflict. Renewed fighting in August 2009 in this recurrent conflict since 2004 had caused a mass exodus from the region of Saada, a stronghold of the rebellion against Sanaa.