YEMEN - Sept 4 - Two Civilians Killed In Yemen Protests.

Two Yemenis are killed and more than 20 people injured when riot police fired bullets to disperse a second day of protests held by retired officers and soldiers wanting to rejoin the army, local officials said. Nasser Ba Qazqaz, head of the opposition Tagammu Union Party in the southern province of Hadramawt, said the police killed two unarmed civilians and wounded 22 others in the southern city of Al Mukalla, 560 km southeast of the capital, Sana'a. The Interior Ministry, however, said only one person was killed and five others wounded when ordinary civilians opened fire on the demonstrators, trying to protect their property. In a statement, the ministry identified the protesters as 'outlaw rioters' and said several people were arrested. Ba Qazqaz rejected the ministry's statement and identified the two killed as Salah Al Qahoum, 15, and Akram Abdu Jarman, 21, adding that authorities arrested 15 other politicians and activists as well as scores of ordinary people. On Sept 1, thousands of demonstrators protested in several cities in southern Yemen, underlining the increasing tensions between the two halves of the country 13 years after a civil war. Dozens of army vehicles deployed Sunday in the two southern cities of Al Mukalla and Aden, sealing off several roads, and rounding up demonstrators dispersed by tear gas and bullets. Demonstrations of disaffected veterans first erupted in early August, with one person reportedly killed and some 1,000 arrested when thousands marched through the port city of Aden and clashed with police. Partial solution The government said earlier it had responded to the veterans' demands by allowing more than 7,000 of them back into the army, an offer that was turned down by the retired officers, who called it only a partial solution. North and South Yemen were united in 1990, with the north's president becoming the united country's president. In 1994, rebels announced the secession of the south, and battled northern forces for several months in a civil war that ended in their defeat. Afterward, about 60,000 southern servicemen were discharged from the army, which is dominated by northerners. Southerners also complain that they are kept out of government jobs - a main source of employment in the south - in favour of northerners brought in to fill the bureaucracy and security forces. Northerners also continue to hold large tracts of land in the south granted to them after the civil war.