Tuesday
May312011
Yemen, Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Destroying the Protest Camp
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 20:55 | Scott Lucas in Africa, EA Global, EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran Claimed footage of security forces firing on mass crowd in Taiz in Yemen today
1950 GMT: The Italian Foreign Ministry says it has temporarily shut the Embassy in Yemen and withdrawn all staff.
1940 GMT: Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa has called for talks on reform involving all parties as the regime says it will lift a state of emergency on Wednesday.
Al-Khalifa said the discussions would begin on 1 July, according to the State news agency BNA: "The king called on everyone to take part...to push forward reform for development in all areas and to firmly anchor the bases of the reform process." Al-Khalifa had told journalists that the talks would be "comprehensive, serious, and without preconditions".