Yemen police kill protester, storm opposition camp

---

SANAA, Mar 12 (Reuters): Yemeni police stormed a camp set up by thousands of protesters demanding the end of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's 32-year rule, killing one person and wounding hundreds early on Saturday, witnesses and medical sources said. Witnesses told Reuters hundreds of security forces, wielding bats and knives and using potent teargas, invaded the area where protesters have been camping for weeks in the capital, Sanaa. Doctors at the sit-in said police were blocking medical teams from entering the area and one doctor said a young boy had been fatally shot in the head. "We think around 300 are wounded," he told Reuters, declining to be named. A wave of unrest, inspired partly by popular revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, has weakened Saleh's grip on his poverty-stricken country, a neighbor of oil giant Saudi Arabia and home to an agile and ambitious regional al Qaeda wing. Clashes between rock-throwing Saleh loyalists and protesters broke out late on Friday as the demonstrators tried to extend the area of the sit-in to make room for increasing numbers. Witnesses said police smashed into the site in a pre-dawn raid as protesters were preparing for early morning prayers. "It felt like a massacre, there were police teams in official uniforms and plain-clothes police and they were attacking the protesters," one witness said. "They used tear gas and gunfire and chased some people out into the streets." "It's a tragic scene. The wounded are being put in mosques and in surrounding streets because the clinics can't take them all," another witness said, again declining to be named. Protesters later broke down a fence police had put up to try and prevent more supporters from joining the sit-in, but men wielding daggers were stopping people from entering the area.