They said the trouble began late on Thursday when activists of the pro-secession Southern Movement, which opposes the election, threw stones and petrol bombs at a sit-in of pro-election activists in Mukalla, the capital of Hadramawt province. The activists have been campaigning for the election, which will see Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi stand as the sole candidate to replace veteran strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is standing down under a Gulf-brokered deal.
Tuesday’s election follows a year of protests against Saleh’s rule, deadly unrest that erupted last January as the so-called Arab Spring swept through Tunisia and Egypt.
Saleh’s departure has been the main demand of the anti-regime demonstrators in Yemen. “Armed men of the Southern Movement” attacked their sit-in, the activists said in a statement, “injuring 60 youths of the revolution, some seriously, and setting fire to four tents” in Mukalla’s Change Place, focus of the protests.
Residents also reported Southern Movement protests against the election in several other Hadramawt towns late Thursday. Thousands of people have burned their electoral cards in recent weeks at the urging of the Southern Movement.
Meanwhile, government forces detained 10 Al-Qaeda-linked fighters on Friday, a security source said, after an attack in a town which underscored the security challenges of next week's presidential elections.
On Wednesday, militants shot dead a military officer and an election official in the town of Baydah, about 130 km southeast of the capital Sanaa.
The militants opened fire on a car carrying Khaled Waqaa, the leader of a brigade of the elite Republican Guard, killing him as well as the head of Baydah's election committee, Hussein Al-Babli, his son and two soldiers. Ten people were wounded.
Yemenis vote on Feb. 21 to pick a leader to replace Saleh, now in the United States for medical treatment, amid concern that violence could reduce turnout.
Militant group Ansar Al-Shariah claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack but said it had targeted only the military commander in revenge for the government's failure to fulfil its half of a deal under which militants quit a town they had seized.
Militants agreed last month to pull out of Radda, about 170 km southeast of Sanaa, in exchange for the formation of a council to govern it under Islamic law and the release of several jailed comrades.
The militants' spokesman said that instead of setting up such a council, Republican Guard forces had entered the town. He warned the assassination was just a preliminary response.
Saleh formally handed power to his deputy, Vice President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in November as part of a Gulf-brokered plan to end months of anti-government protests that paralysed the impoverished state for most of 2011.
Weakened by the upheaval, Yemen's government has lost control of swathes of the country, giving Al-Qaeda's regional Yemen-based wing room to expand its foothold near oil shipping routes through the Red Sea.
