Yemeni police killed one anti-government demonstrator and wounded scores more yesterday, as embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh called for an end to protests demanding he step down.

The security forces shot dead a young man who was tearing up a poster of Mr Saleh during a demonstration in Taez, some 200 kilometres south of the capital Sanaa, said medics and witnesses.

His killing took the death toll to nearly 100 from a crackdown on anti-regime protests that erupted in the Arabian Peninsula country in late January, according to international human rights watchdogs.

Yemen’s opposition had told Mr Saleh to end his three-decade grip on power by handing over to his deputy for a period of transition, a proposal the veteran leader brushed off a day later yesterday.

At least 1,200 others were injured yesterday in Taez, some with live rounds, as police used tear gas and batons to disperse the protesters, said medics in the city’s Al-Thawra hospital, adding many of them were in a critical condition.

Witnesses said police cars in the area were taking wounded protesters away to an unknown destination.

Police kept firing as security forces pushed back the demonstrators to a square where they have been holding a sit-in as part of nationwide protests demanding Mr Saleh resign, the witnesses added.

Meanwhile, hundreds poured to the site of the clashes to support the protesters.

The opposition, which has led the more than two month old protests, had called on the president on Saturday to hand over power to his deputy.

In a new “vision for a peaceful and secure transition of power,” the opposition Common Forum urged Mr Saleh “to announce his resignation, so that his powers pass to his deputy.”

Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, who is from the southern province of Abyan, is a member of Mr Saleh’s ruling General People’s Congress.

It was the first time the opposition had presented a proposal for the transition of power which it has been demanding since anti-Saleh protests broke out in late January.

In what appeared to be a response to the proposal, Mr Saleh told visitors the Common Forum should “end the crisis through calling off protests and removing roadblocks”.

Mr Saleh had last week said he was “not clinging on to power,” in an abstract statement stressing that he wanted to transfer power to the people.

“I will transfer power to the people, who are the source and owner of power,” he said, warning Yemen was a “time bomb” and could slide into civil war like Somalia across the Gulf of Aden.