President Saleh of Yemen fires cabinet amidst stream of resignations

Anger and horror on the faces of Yemeni protesters who checked on friends in the field hospitals on Friday after the boodbath. (AP)


Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh has fired his cabinet, according to a statement from his office on Sunday. His measure was taken after ministeer after minisyters was resigning from the government, in protest over the killing of at least 52 protesters by thugs in the service of the government during a demonstration on Friday. 
 Abdullah Alsaidi, Yemen's ambassador to the United Nations, quit in on Sunday. So did twenty-four parliamentarians, who left the ruling party one day earlier. Huda al-Baan, Yemen's human rights minister, said on Saturday she had resigned from the government to protest the 'massacre' of demonstrators. The undersecretary at the ministry, Ali Taysir, resigned also. Nabil al-Faqih, the minister of tourism, resigned on Friday over the 'unjustifiable use of force' against protesters, while the minister of religious endowments Hamoud al-Hattar resigned earlier in the week. The chief of the state news agency has also stepped down, along with Yemen's ambassador to Lebanon.
"The defections are on all sides and this is just the beginning," Abdul Ghani Al Iryani, a political analyst in the capital, Sanaa, told Al Jazeera. 'I  think if we don't come to some kind of national reconciliation, the defections will continue until the regime falls. The president is talking to various political groups but he's not talking to the main group, which is the youth in the square. If he wants to get out of this, he will have to address their concerns, he'll have to  include them in any national dialogue and he will have to accept the fact that much of his power needs to be transferred to a government of national unity.'
Meanwhile tnes of thousands turned out for the funeral of the victims of Fridays carnage.