AMMAN: Jordan’s Islamist opposition urged King Abdallah to form a government of national salvation yesterday to calm street protests sparked by steep increases in fuel prices. The call came as several thousand Islamists and members of leftist parties rallied in the capital Amman to keep up pressure on a government they blame for worsening the plight of the poor. The price hikes include a 54 percent increase in the cost of gas cylinders used for cooking and heating. Much of the unrest since mid-November has hit impoverished towns across the country of 7 million. The protesters called for the removal of Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour and urged citizens to rise up against the price rises, which the government says are necessary to bring stretched state finances under control. Officials from the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest political party, say the authorities should form a more credible, broad-based government to restore stability. “Wisdom is needed by the authorities to defuse the crisis the country is facing and to respond to people’s demands to abolish price increases and form a government of national salvation,” said Sheikh Hamza Mansour, head of the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Brotherhood. He warned: “Unless the state backs down, the nation is open to all possibilities.”
Protesters, police clash in Tunisia town
SILIANA: Protesters clashed with police yesterday in Tunisia’s flashpoint town of Siliana, where violence has left hundreds wounded this week, as political instability mounts two years after the revolution. Thousands took to the streets of the impoverished town demanding the governor’s resignation and financial aid in a fourth straight day of unrest, with the authorities battling to maintain order. In a repeat of events, protesters attacked a police station, hurling rocks and erecting barricades, with the police firing tear gas and chasing the demonstrators through the streets. A local representative of the UGTT, Tunisia’s main trade union, which had called Friday’s demonstration, urged the protesters to disperse. “Go back home, it’s dangerous. They will fire on you with live rounds,” shouted Abdesattar Manai. The symbolic march towards Tunis, which was initially peaceful, drew a crowd of thousands, who took part on foot, in cars and on motorcycles, chanting: “With our souls and our blood we sacrifice for Siliana.”
Two people in Jordan die from Sars
GENEVA: Two people who died in Jordan in April have been found to have been infected with the new virus from the same family as SARS which sparked a global alert in September, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday. The coronavirus, previously unknown in humans, has now been confirmed in a total of nine people in three countries in the Middle East region, including a Saudi who had severe acute respiratory illness last month, the United Nations agency said. But the two fatal cases in Jordan, confirmed in samples just retested by a WHO collaborating laboratory in Egypt, do not change WHO’s assessment that the virus does not appear to spread easily between people, if at all, spokesman Gregory Hartl said. Agencies
