Bomb blast hits anti-US rally in Yemen, injures 22

Press TV – March 2, 2012

A bomb explosion has hit an anti-US protest rally in northern Yemen, injuring at least 22 people, Houthi fighters reported.

The resistance group, which controls much of the north of the country, said the explosion occurred in Sa’ada Province on Friday without providing further details.

Yemen has been the scene of anti-US rallies since a Washington-backed power transfer deal granted the country’s long-time dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh immunity from prosecution in return for stepping down.

Yemenis say Saleh and his aides must stand trial and face justice over the deadly crackdown on protests over the past year which killed nearly 2,000 anti-government demonstrators.

Yemenis also accuse the US and its ally Saudi Arabia of derailing their revolution by brokering a deal that transferred power from Saleh to his deputy, the UK-trained army Field Marshal Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, in a single-candidate election.

On Tuesday, thousands of Yemenis gathered outside the US Embassy in the capital, Sana’a, demanding the expulsion of Washington’s ambassador to Yemen over his intervention in the country’s internal affairs and the desecration of the Holy Qur’an in a US-run military base in Afghanistan.

Angry protesters burned the US flag and an effigy of US Ambassador Gerald Michael Feierstein.

Feierstein is accused of having a role in holding the recent single-candidate presidential election in Yemen and returning Saleh home from a ”medical visit” to the US.

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