"We're very surprised that the international community is turning away from what's happening in Yemen," said Khaled Ayesh Abdullah, 30, executive manager of the National Forum for Human Rights, a Yemeni nonprofit. "They're leaving us in the line of fire of a criminal."
Friday's crowds were some of the biggest yet in the two-month-long uprisings. Video recorded in southern Syria and Yemen's capital, San'a, showed similar events: security forces attacking unarmed protesters who had staged peaceful gatherings to demand the ouster of their unelected leaders.
Saleh declared a state of emergency after his security forces opened fire on tens of thousands of protesters. TV-news footage of a main hospital showed overwhelmed doctors moving frantically among their dying patients.
"This is really murder!" a doctor yells in one video, gesturing to a writhing, bloodied man. "We are calling on the world to come and see!"
Atiaf al-Wazir, 31, a Yemeni American blogger and activist, said from San'a: "I saw 18 dead bodies, all shot with live ammunition, and I was informed that the injured were taken to five other hospitals around the city because the hospital wasn't big enough to hold all the wounded."
News reports cited medical sources as saying 46 people were killed, including some children, and scores injured.
In Syria, security forces killed three protesters in the southern city of Deraa, according to Reuters, which reported smaller protests in the central city of Homs and the coastal town of Banias. In the old quarter of the capital, Damascus, crowds briefly chanted opposition slogans inside a historic mosque before being surrounded by security forces.
Syria's authoritarian regime has zero tolerance for demonstrations and has jailed prominent dissidents in recent days.
