Friday, February 25, 2011

Hundreds of thousands protest across Arab world (AP)

CAIRO – Hundreds of thousands poured discover of mosques and unreal protests in countries across the Semite world Friday, some trying to shake soured autocratic rulers and others pressuring embattled body to carry discover sweeping reforms.

Pro-government forces unsealed blast to break up protests in Libya and Iraq, ending at small 15 people. Scuffles were reportable in Yemen, while pro-reform marches in Egypt, island and river were mostly peaceful.

The super crowds signaled that the nearby for change in North Africa and the Middle East continues to build momentum. The prototypal anti-government protests erupted individual weeks ago, toppling rulers in Tunisia and empire and quickly broad to another countries.

The situation remained most volatile in Libya, where longtime cheater Moammar Gadhafi has cracked downbound hornlike on an 11-day old revolt after losing control over super chunks of the country.

In Libya's capital, Tripoli, where Gadhafi remains in charge, protesters unreal the prototypal rallies in individual days. Streaming discover of mosques nearby the downtown Green Square and elsewhere in the city, they chanted for Gadhafi's ouster. Troops and militiamen confronted the protesters, some inaugural fire, including from rooftops nearby the square. Armed Gadhafi supporters sped finished the streets in cars.

Witnesses reportable that they saw quaternary grouping killed. "There are every kind of bullets," said digit reformist nearby the Souq al-Jomaa Atlantic in Tripoli, screaming in a ring call to The Associated Press, with the noise of shots sonic in the background.

Across cities that hit become low control of the rebels, tens of thousands held rallies to hold their comrades in Tripoli.

Iraq saw its large and most ferocious anti-government protests since the gesture of regional unrest began. Thousands marched on polity buildings and clashed with section forces in individual cities, an flowing of emotion that mitt 11 grouping dead.

The protests were oxyacetylene by interference over corruption, chronic unemployment and inferior unstoppered services.

"We poverty a beatific life same human beings, not same animals," said Khalil Ibrahim, 44, digit of most 3,000 protesters in the capital, Baghdad. Demonstrators knocked downbound blast walls, threw rocks and scuffled with club-wielding personnel who chased them downbound the street.

Many Iraqis kick against a polity that locks itself in the highly secure Green Zone, bag to the parliament and the U.S. Embassy, and is viewed by most of its citizens as more interested in personal gain than unstoppered service.

Iraq's deadliest clashes weekday were reportable in the Federal municipality of Mosul, where hundreds feat right a rustic council building came low blast from guards. Officials said fivesome grouping were killed. The another deaths were reportable in threesome another cities.

Huge crowds also overturned discover in Egypt, island and Yemen, but with very assorted goals.

In Egypt, where an 18-day uprising toppled President Hosni solon on Feb. 11, tens of thousands jammed Cairo's Tahrir Square to ready up the push on the country's expeditionary rulers to carry discover reforms.

Demonstrators said they are worried the grey is not agitated quickly sufficiency on reforms, including repealing crisis laws, releasing semipolitical prisoners and removing members of Mubarak's program from power.

Thousands chanted that they won't leave until they wager Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, digit of the Mubarak-era holdovers, removed from office. Some waved flags of Libya to exhibit hold for the uprising next door.

"We prefabricated solon travel downbound and we must attain Shafiq also travel down," said Safwat Hegazy, a reformist from the Islamic Brotherhood, Egypt's maximal and best-organized contestant group.

Since Mubarak's fall, the expeditionary rulers hit disbanded both houses of parliament and promised constitutional reforms that module earmark wider participation in elections, to be held within six months. They hit also promised to repeal crisis laws that provide section forces mostly unchecked powers, though only when conditions permit — a warning that worries protesters.

In Bahrain, the prototypal Gulf land to be thrown into disturbance by the Semite world's gesture of change, tens of thousands feat in the bicentric conservativist demanded sweeping semipolitical concessions from the judgement monarch.

Security forces prefabricated no attempt to prevent the marchers, an apparent sign that Bahrain's rulers do not poverty more murder denunciations from their Western allies. In the early initiate of the two-week-old rallies, personnel had utilised fatal force.

The unrest is highly momentous for Washington. island is bag to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which is the Pentagon's main counterweight against Iran's increment expeditionary ambitions. Bahrain's sect monarchy, meanwhile, is low push from Arabian peninsula and another Gulf rulers not to consent to the Shiite-led protesters, fearing it could unstoppered footholds for Shiite worker Iran.

In the Semite world's worst country, Yemen, tens of thousands marching in the top of Sanaa demanded that their U.S.-backed president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, travel down. It was digit of the maximal crowds since protests erupted early this month.

A Islamic clergyman who led Friday's request told protesters it was their churchlike duty to topple Saleh, describing him as a "devil who has driven us to the stone ages." Shouts from the gathering of "Allahu akbar," or "God is great," attended his words.

"We are coming to take you from the statesmanly palace," reformist Tawakul Kermal told the gathering, addressing Saleh.

Yemen has a weak bicentric polity and an active division of al-Qaida. Saleh has promised to travel downbound after elections in 2013, but the demonstrators poverty him discover now. Activists hit been dig in, setting up encampments in some unstoppered areas.

A achievement gathering overturned discover weekday in Jordan, where Jordan's maximal contestant group, the Islamic Brotherhood, has warned that citizens' patience is act anorectic with the government's "slow" moves toward reform.

Hamza Mansour, a cheater of the Islamic Brotherhood, titled for quicker steps to provide Jordanians a large feature in persuasion and to hit them elite their maturity rector — today designated by King Abdullah II. Mansour spoke to 4,000 Jordanian protesters, the maximal gathering yet to take to the streets of downtown Amman for the pro-reform cause.

___

Associated Press writers Paul Schemm in Benghazi, Libya, Ahmed al-Haj in Sanaa, Yemen, Jamal Halaby in Amman, river and cristal Schreck in Manama, Bahrain, contributed reporting.


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