Yemeni police killed one protester and wounded scores of others when they opened fire on anti-government demonstrators in the city of Taez on Sunday, April 3 witnesses said.

"The man was shot in the chest while tearing up a poster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh," one witness said.

Others said that at least 250 protesters were injured, some with live bullets, when police fired tear gas and gunfire to disperse a protest heading to the governorate headquarters in Taez, some 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of the capital Sanaa.

Police continued to fire as security forces pushed back demonstrators to a square where they have been holding a sit-in as part of nationwide protests demanding that Saleh step down, witnesses said.

A member of parliament who did not want to be named charged that police were "attempting to storm the sit-in square," AFP reported.