Seven shot dead in new anti-Saleh protests

Activists said dozens of people were also wounded and taken by ambulances to a field hospital in Sixty Street in the capital, Sanaa, where thousands of opponents of president Ali Abdullah Saleh have camped out for months demanding he steps down.

In a separate incident, witnesses said government forces fought heavy battles with gunmen loyal to powerful tribal leader Sadeq al-Ahmar, who supports opposition demands for an end to Saleh’s 33-year grip on power.

They said the fighting was concentrated in the Al Hasba neighbourhood of Sanaa and near the airport, which was closed by the fighting. All flights were stopped. There were no reports of casualties in the clashes.

Meanwhile, a day after the head of the media department of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was killed in an air raid on militant outposts in Yemen, gunmen retaliated by blowing up a gas export pipeline.

The death of Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian described by Yemeni officials as high on their wanted list, is a fresh blow to the Islamist group.

But the destruction of France’s Total gas pipeline, which transports gas from the central Maarib province to the port of Belhaf on the Arabian Sea, was expected to deal a severe blow to the Yemeni economy, which is already reeling from months of protests demanding Saleh quits.

The Yemeni defence ministry said six other militants died in the air raids late on Friday on militant hideouts near the town of Azzan in the southern Shabwa province.

Residents and officials said they believed it was foreign aircraft, flying at high altitude and smaller than the Soviet-made Yemeni air force planes, that launched at least three strikes on several targets.

“There were planes flying high. I could hear the sounds of their engines but I could not make them out,” said a witness who did not want to be identified. “All of a sudden, the area was shaken by successive explosions,” he added.

A Yemeni official described al-Banna as a “dangerous” militant and one of the world’s most wanted people. Witnesses said militants were seen removing several bodies and an unknown number of injured people from the scene after the raid early yesterday.

Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda, who are trying to establish a foothold in Yemen, captured large swathes of southern Abyan province, including the provincial capital Zinjibar, earlier this year.

The Yemeni army last month drove the militants out of Zinjibar, which lies east of a strategic shipping strait through which tankers carrying some three million barrels of oil pass each day.

Residents and officials said that the 322km pipeline, which links gas fields in Maarib, east of Sanaa, to a $4.5 billion (£2.8bn) Total-led liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, was blown up soon after the raids.

Sources at Total said the pipeline was blown up in two places, stopping supplies to the Belhaf LNG plant.