Four killed in south as violence mars Yemen polls

Four people including a child were killed in clashes Tuesday in south Yemen between security forces and separatists, who have called for "civil disobedience" in protest at the country's presidential polls, officials and medics said.

A 10-year-old child was killed when militants from the separatist Southern Movement traded gunfire with police near the election commission headquarters in Aden's Dar Saad neighbourhood, residents and medics said.

Southern Movement gunmen killed a policeman in Mansura, also in Aden, the main city in the south, a security official said, adding that two others were wounded in Dar Saad.

In the southeastern city of Mukalla, separatists attacked a polling station killing a soldier, a military official said.

"Gunmen from the Southern Movement tried to storm a polling station" in the capital of Hadramawt province "killing a soldier," the official said, adding the two gunmen were wounded in the assault.

Also in Hadramawt, militants wounded two members of the security forces in separate attacks in two different towns, a security official said.

In Lahij province, a protester was killed and two others were wounded in clashes between hardline factions of the Southern Movement and security forces, activists from the movement said.

"Security forces shot dead Fadhl Naser Badie who was among a group of demonstrators gathered outside a polling station in protest against the elections in Huta" in Lahij, one activist said.

Two other protesters were wounded in the same attack, the source said.

Activists from the Southern Movement, who say the election fails to meet their aspirations for autonomy or southern independence, have boycotted the referendum-like elections in which Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi is the sole consensus candidate.

But some factions of the movement have vowed to prevent the polls from taking place at all.

Nationwide protests erupted against Saleh's regime in January 2011, triggering months of bloodshed.

Residents in the formerly independent southern region complain of discrimination by the Sanaa government in the distribution of resources since the union between north and south in 1990.

The south broke away again in 1994, sparking a brief civil war that ended with the region overrun by northern troops.

Hadi, himself a southerner, will become president for a two-year interim period as stipulated in a Gulf-brokered deal signed by President Ali Abdullah Saleh after months of protests against his 33-year-rule.

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.