Yemen's ambassador to the United Nations Abdullah Alsaidi has resigned, the latest high-ranking member of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's government to quit in protest against the killing of dozens of demonstrators.
Snipers killed up to 42 protesters among crowds that flocked to a sit-in at Sanaa University after Friday prayers. The opposition says at least seven snipers were caught carrying government identity cards, a charge the government has denied.
"Mr. Alsaidi has sent his resignation to the president's office and the Foreign Ministry," a Yemeni Foreign Ministry official said on Sunday, and added that it was in protest at the Friday violence.
Defying a crackdown after the government called a state of emergency, the opposition has vowed to keep up its pressure to end Saleh's 32-year rule in the poor Arabian Peninsula state, a neighbor of Saudi Arabia and a U.S. ally against al Qaeda.
Meanwhile, a bit to the northeast of Yemen, protests and crackdowns in Syria are underway.
Crowds set fire to the headquarters of the ruling Baath Party in the Syrian city of Deraa Sunday, residents said, as the wave of unrest in the Arab world shook even one of its most authoritarian states.
The demonstrators also set ablaze the main courts complex and two phone company branches. One of the firms, Syriatel, is owned by President Bashar al-Assad's cousin Rami Makhlouf.
"They burned the symbols of oppression and corruption," an activist said. "The banks nearby were not touched."
Thousands rallied to demand an end to 48 years of emergency law in the southern city, on the third consecutive day of protests emerging as the biggest ever challenge to Syria's ruling party since it seized power nearly half a century ago.
"No, no to emergency law. We are a people infatuated with freedom," marchers chanted, despite the arrival in Deraa of a government delegation to pay condolences to relatives of victims killed by security forces in demonstrations there this week.
Arab rulers are falling apart, and the people rising up are treating both US intervention (that gave them the status quo of repressive, authoritarian rule) and Islamist violence (which they have seen lead to death and destruction in both Sunni and Shi'a states) as the enemy.
It's a pretty dangerous situation from Tunisia all the way over to Pakistan and the war in Libya, crackdowns in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Iran aren't helping, and neither is the quasi-military coup in Egypt. We're rapidly reaching a fully out-of-control situation here.
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