Separatist demonstrators took to the streets of several cities in southern Yemen yesterday – protesting at the banning of demonstrations on November 30 (Yemen's Independence Day) and demanding the release of those arrested.

One person died in a gunfight during a protest in Zinjibar and two people, including a senior police officer, were wounded in Qatabah, 
AFP reports.

Meanwhile, the NewsYemen website – which lost all its data last week – is claiming that the site was deliberately destroyed by a virus from the telecommunications ministry.

“We have received information from the host company of our website that indicated that the virus was sent from the Internet Administration at the Ministry of Telecommunication,” publisher Nabil al-Sofi told the Yemen Observer.

“We received some warnings from different people in the government, but we expressed our willingness to abide by any list they sent us of what not to write about. Nevertheless, we never heard a response, and instead, now we have lost five years of our work,” he said.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 4 December 2009.