Yemen's Saleh out of intensive care

Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh is out of intensive care in Saudi Arabia where he is being treated for bomb blast wounds, state media said, prompting celebratory gunfire that hurt dozens of people.

Saleh's troops on Thursday killed two pro-protester gunmen in the southern protest hub of Taez while fighting intensified in the southern town Zinjibar, held by suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen since last month.

Fireworks crackled over Sanaa on Wednesday night as Saleh loyalists took to the streets "feting the success of the surgery... and his transfer from intensive care to a royal suite" in a Riyadh hospital, Saba state news agency said.

The celebratory gunfire wounded about 80 people in the capital alone, medical sources said. Witnesses said there were also casualties in provincial towns.

There have been conflicting reports about Saleh's health since he was flown to Riyadh on Saturday for treatment for wounds sustained in a bomb attack on his presidential compound the previous day. He has not been seen in public since.

A Saudi official said Wednesday the embattled Yemeni president's health was "stable", adding he was waiting for doctors to "appoint a date for cosmetic surgery."

Saleh, 69, would undergo an operation to treat "light burns on the scalp," he said, adding "reports on the deterioration of his health condition are baseless".

Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi has insisted Saleh is in good condition and that he will return to Yemen within days.

The Saudi daily Al-Watan quoted the head of Yemeni community in the kingdom as saying he had visited Saleh in hospital and that he was in good health.

"He was well... I visited him in the evening and he spoke to us. He asked about (Yemeni) expatriates," Taha al-Humayri was quoted as saying.

But as Saleh recovers, opponents who have been protesting for his departure since late January are pushing his deputy to establish an interim ruling council to prevent him from returning to power.

"We will continue to press for the formation of an interim presidential council," Wassim al-Qurshi, a leading protest activist told AFP on Thursday.

Saleh's opponents demanded this week "an immediate declaration of a one-year transition period... and the formation of an interim presidential council."

The protesters also appealed for "former regime" figures to be banned from joining the council and that its members be barred from standing in future presidential elections.

Saleh has come under mounting international pressure to quit as five months of protests have drawn in powerful tribes, sparking deadly fighting with loyalist security forces on the streets of Sanaa.

The United States has warned the turmoil in Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland is playing into the hands of Al-Qaeda.

Yemen "has grown into a very virulent deadly federated point in the Al-Qaeda organisation," said the top US uniformed commander, Admiral Michael Mullen.

The New York Times reported the United States has stepped up air strikes on suspected militant targets in Yemen, using both drones and manned fighter jets, nearly a year after halting them after bad intelligence led to civilian deaths.

Saleh's government has been a key partner in the US 'war on terror" but it has always denied US strikes on its soil insisting its own forces carried out the operations.

New fighting erupted around the militant-held Zinjibar late on Wednesday, killing three soldiers and 10 suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen, an officer said.

The defence ministry said 12 Al-Qaeda members were killed in Abyan, among them three leading figures named as Ammar al-Waeli, Abu Ali al-Harithi and Abu Ayman al-Masri.

Government officials say most of the town is in the hands of the jihadists but the opposition accuses Saleh of exaggerating the Al-Qaeda threat in a desperate bid to ease foreign pressure on his 33-year rule.

In Taez, troops killed two members of the "Eagles of Liberty" local militia that sided with protesters.

Vigilante committees of locals and tribesmen had been deployed around most of Taez, Yemen's second-largest city, after security forces retreated to their bases following clashes.

Security forces killed more than 50 protesters according to UN figures in a crackdown on May 30 on an anti-regime sit-in at Freedom Square in Taez.

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