After the shelling, gunmen allied with opposition parties clashed with government forces, killing five soldiers and wounding 15 others, a security source said.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh was eased out of office last week under a Gulf-brokered plan, after 10 months of anti-government protests, handing power to his deputy.
The plan’s sponsors hope it will halt a slide into civil war on the doorstep of the world’s biggest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, and prevent Al-Qaeda’s regional branch from jeopardizing shipping routes through the Red Sea.
But the deal ending Saleh’s 33 years in power has so far failed to stop bloodshed in the impoverished Arab state.
Residents said government forces shelled residential areas in Taiz, Yemen’s commercial capital located some 200 km (120 miles) south of the capital Sanaa.
“We are living in an atmosphere of real war. We couldn’t sleep from the intensity of the blasts. We came to the aid of five residents of the quarter whose house a shell landed on,” resident Abdullah Al-Sharaabi told Reuters by telephone.
A security official dismissed the reports as “lies” and said “armed elements” had attacked several security checkpoints in the city.
Medics at Al-Rawdah hospital said five civilians had been killed and several injured. Staff at a field hospital in Taiz said it had received 10 injured civilians.
“Saleh’s forces, which are concentrated in various parts of the city, fired shells on Al-Manakh and Al-Hasab Wabeer Basha districts and the shelling continued until the early hours of Thursday morning,” said lawyer Tawfeeq Al-Shaabi, an activist in the protest movement.
The opposition said it had submitted to the country’s interim leader Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi a list of its chosen representatives for a military council tasked with running the army until a new president is elected.
A presidential election has been set for Feb. 21.
“We gave Hadi a list of seven representatives of the opposition and they include the former defense minister and the former interior minister, along with five other senior army leaders who declared their support for the protest movement demanding Saleh leave,” an opposition source told Reuters.
Under the Gulf initiative signed by Saleh, a body will be set up to restructure the armed forces. Saleh’s son Ahmed commands the Republican Guard, one of the best equipped units.
