SANAA: Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across Yemen for the fourth straight day, demanding political reforms and the downfall of Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The demonstrators in the capital, Sanaa, comprising students, human rights activists and lawyers clad in black robes, clashed with police and pro-government supporters on Monday.
At least three people were injured, including one stabbed with a traditional Yemeni dagger, in fighting outside Sanaa's university where protesters chanted: "A revolution of free opinion ... A revolution of freedom ... We should be allowed to decide."
Further chants of "After Mubarak, Ali" and "No corruption after today" reverberated around the city.
Thousands of young Yemenis are saying: 'We won't trust Ali Abdullah Saleh, because we trusted him in the past, particularly in 2006, when he said he was about to resign - only for him to continue and to ask for the constitution to be amended to allow him to be appointed for life'."
Public squares blocked
Protesters have been using social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, in an attempt to mobilise people throughout Yemen, an impoverished country at the south of the Arabian peninsula.
But state forces have blocked access to public squares, several coincidentally named "Tahrir Square" - both in Sanaa, and around the country.
The move was an apparent attempt to prevent the world's media from linking the protests with those that took place in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.
Several checkpoints have appeared on streets leading to Sanaa's presidential palace, and many have been blocked with razor wire.
"What we are seeing is thousands of pro-government protesters - and people are saying these are government officials and policemen disguised as civilians - armed with batons, attacking the pro-democracy protesters and dispersing the crowd using violence," our correspondent said.
Unrest spreads
While it is possible to find Yemenis who say Saleh, 64, is "the best we've had, and after him would be chaos", thousands have hit the streets in protests across the country, including in Aden and Taaz, a southern city, Al Jazeera's Ahelbarra said.
At least 12 people were injured as police shot tear gas to break up protests in the southern city of Taaz, where human rights groups say protesters were also given electric shocks by security officials.
And in Aden, dock workers stormed the offices of the Yemen Gulf of Aden Port Corporation, seizing its chairman, Mohamed Bin Aefan, and other senior corporate figures, they said.
"We have had it with corrupt officials and it's time to tell them to leave," Ali Bin Yehya, a port worker, said.
"What happened in Egypt and Tunisia motivated the workers to demand their rights."
Opposition groups appear to have backtracked on an agreement made on Sunday to meet with Saleh to find a political settlement to the crisis, our correspondent said.
The groups had also aimed to establish a coalition "government of national unity" - after their supporters pointed to the success of Egyptians in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak from power, Ahelbarra said.
Saleh became leader of North Yemen in 1978 and has ruled the Republic of Yemen since the north and south merged in 1990.
