Hundreds of Thousands Protest Across Mideast

Muhammed Muheisen/Associated Press
Protesters in Sana, Yemen, called for the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. More Photos »

By SHARON OTTERMAN and J. DAVID GOODMAN
Published: February 25, 2011

CAIRO — Hundreds of thousands of protesters turned out in cities across the Middle East on Friday to protest the unaccountability of their leaders and express solidarity with the uprising in Libya that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is trying to suppress with force.

The worst violence of the day appeared to be in Libya, where security forces shot at protesters as they left Friday prayers to try to launch the first major anti-government demonstration in the capital. Demonstrations in recent days have been in other cities, and several of those have fallen to armed rebels determined to oust Colonel Qaddafi.

Protests in Iraq also took a violent turn, with security forces firing on crowds in Baghdad, Mosul, Ramadi and in Salahuddin Province, killing at least ten people. Unlike in other Middle Eastern countries, the protesters in Iraq are not seeking to topple their leaders, but are demanding better government services after years of war and deprivation.

Religious leaders and the prime minister had pleaded with people not to take to the streets, with Moktada al-Sadr saying the new government needed a chance to improve services and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki warning that insurgents could target the gatherings. But on Friday, the deaths came at the hands of government forces.

Demonstrations elsewhere — in Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia — were almost exclusively peaceful.

In Bahrain, pro-democracy demonstrations on a scale that appeared to dwarf the largest ever seen in the tiny Persian Gulf nation blocked miles of downtown roads and highways in Manama, the capital. The crowds overflowed from Pearl Square in the center of the city for the second time in a week, but the government once again allowed the demonstration to proceed.

Late Friday, in what appeared to be a concession to the protesters, the king fired three ministers. But he did not fire the prime minister — one of the opposition’s main demands.

Government forces had cracked down brutally last week, killing at least seven, but backed down under intense pressure from the United States. Since then, the country appears to be locked in a battle of wills between mostly Shiite protesters and their Sunni monarch. Shiites are a majority in Bahrain, a United States ally, and they say they have long faced discrimination from the country’s minority Sunni elite.

In a shift, it was the country’s Shiite religious leaders who called for people to take to the streets Friday, rather than the political opposition. Although some of the chants and symbols Friday had a religious cast, protesters’ demands remained the same — emphasizing a nonsectarian call for democracy and the downfall of the government.

“We are winners, and victory comes from God,” protesters chanted in Manama.

A few of the protesters carried black flags — a Shiite mourning symbol — but they appeared in a vast sea of red and white, the colors of Bahrain.

Crowds stretched two miles to the Bahrain Mall, east of Pearl Square, and about another two miles southwest of the square to the Salmaniya Medical Complex, which has treated wounded protesters and been a focal point of demonstrations.

The violence in Iraq came after demonstrators responded to a call for a “day of rage,” despite attempts by the government to keep people from taking to the streets. Security officials in Baghdad banned all cars from the streets until further notice.

In Yemen, more than 100,000 people poured into the streets of the city of Taiz, a center of the protests, after the country’s embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, pledged on Wednesday not to crack down on demonstrators. Protesters in recent weeks have faced sporadic violence from security forces and government supporters.

The protest in Taiz was dubbed “Martyrs’ Friday,” in honor of two protesters who died in a grenade attack last week.

While weeks of protests in the capital, Sana, have been tense, with repeated clashes between pro and antigovernment forces, the demonstration in Taiz, the intellectual hub of the country, took on a hopeful, exhilarated feel Friday. Along with the youth who organized the protests on Facebook, older residents of the countryside flowed into the area of the town that protesters have dubbed Freedom Square.

“There are no parties, our revolution is a youth revolution,” read one banner. In emulation of Egypt’s Tahrir Square, the center of the protest zone in Taiz was filled with some 100 tents, where people had spent the night for more than a week.

A cleric delivered a morning speech, reminding the people that the revolution was not against a single person but against oppression itself. And as noon prayers ended, the people broke out into the roaring chant that has now become familiar around the Arab world: “The people want to topple the regime.”

At the same time in the capital, tens of thousands of people were pouring into a square near the main gates of Sana University amid a tight security presence, The Associated Press reported.

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Sharon Otterman reported from Cairo and J. David Goodman from New York. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Manama, Bahrain; Jack Healy, Michael S. Schmidt and Duraid Adnan from Baghdad; Laura Kasinof from Taiz, Yemen; Liam Stack from Cairo; Ranya Kadri from Amman, Jordan, and Isabel Kershner in Jerusalem.
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