Violent protests against Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh have again erupted in the capital Sanaa, with at least nine demonstrators killed and dozens hurt, doctors and officials say.
Tens of thousands marching to the city centre were met with live rounds, tear gas and water canon.
President Saleh has been battling eight months of street protests.
Separately, the media chief of militant group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was reportedly killed in an air strike.
Witnesses in Sanaa said protesters calling for the resignation of Mr Saleh were marching from their stronghold in Change Square to an area controlled by the elite Republican Guard force, which is loyal to the president.
Dozens of wounded were being taken by ambulances to a field hospital in Sixty Street.
Anti-government protesters have been camping there for months.
Mr Saleh has so far resisted calls from many Western countries to stand down, despite saying on several occasions he was prepared to do so.
On October 8 he said in a speech broadcast on state television: “I reject power and I will continue to reject it, and I will be leaving power in the coming days.”
Mr Saleh returned to Yemen unexpectedly last month from Saudi Arabia, where he had been receiving treatment after his office was shelled in June.
As well as street protests, he faces an insurrection by renegade army units.
Mr Saleh has repeatedly refused to sign a transition deal brokered by Gulf states, first presented in March, whereby he would hand over power to his vice-president in return for immunity from prosecution.
Pipeline attack
Meanwhile, the country’s defence ministry said al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) media chief Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian national, and six other militants had been killed in an air strike in Shabwa province on Friday.
Some reports said the attack involved US drones, others that it was by Yemeni planes.
Local officials told Reuters news agency the death toll was as high as 24.
US drones killed the group’s leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, last month.
The defence ministry called Banna one of the group’s “most dangerous operatives”, who was wanted internationally for “planning attacks both inside and outside Yemen”.
Local officials said a house where the militants had been meeting had been targeted in the Azan district. They said the house was hit but the group had already left. The vehicles they were then travelling in were subsequently hit and destroyed.
There have been previous reports of Banna’s death, including one in January last year, but these were denied by AQAP.
AFP also quoted a tribal source as saying that one of Awlaki’s sons, Abderrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, had been killed in Friday’s attack, but this has not been independently confirmed.
Reuters reported that militants had later blown up a gas pipeline that runs from Maarib province to Belhaf on the Arabian Sea, with flames visible some kilometres away.
Yemen regularly plays down the US’ role in the country, saying it is supporting Yemen’s own operations.
A US drone attack in Khashef in Jawf province, about 140km (90 miles) east of the capital, Sanaa on 30 September killed Awlaki, a US-born radical Islamist cleric, and US-born propagandist Samir Khan.
