By Hammoud Mounassar (AFP) –

SANAA — Three south Yemeni independence activists were killed and five wounded Thursday as demonstrations in southern towns sparked clashes with police and sympathy rallies in the north against the crackdown

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Two Southern Movement followers were killed and two wounded in a gunfight during protests in the town of Daleh, a leading opposition figure said, asking not to be named.

Another activist was killed and three wounded in a similar clash as police tried to recapture a government building occupied by separatist activists in the town of Tur al-Bahah, in Lahij province, another source said.

Demonstrators brandished flags of former south Yemen and chanted separatist slogans, like "Revolution Oh South," witnesses said.

Pro-independence protests have multiplied in the south in the face of Yemen's worsening economic problems.

South Yemen was independent from 1967 until it united with the north in 1990. An attempt to break away again in 1994 sparked a short-lived civil war that ended when the south was overrun by northern troops.

On Monday, President Ali Abdullah Saleh warned separatists that they could not prevail against the security forces but he also offered to engage in dialogue over their demands.

"The separatist flags are going to burn in the coming days and weeks... If there are any political demands, they are welcome. Come to dialogue," he said.

Meanwhile, opposition parties organised demonstrations in the north against what they saw as the government's heavy-handed approach in the south.

Thousands took to the street of the city of Taiz, answering a call by the opposition coalition to protest against "the militarisation of southern provinces," and demonstrate "solidarity with the demands of the Southern Movement," according to banners raised by protesters.

Police dispersed the rally using fire hoses and batons.

A peaceful protest was also organised in the capital Sanaa. Some 5,000 opposition supporters took part.

The opposition coalition, which includes both northern and southern groups, calls for the social and economic demands of the south to be met, but stops short of backing renewed independence, which is now overtly championed by some members of the Southern Movement.

A coalition statement released on Thursday called "for rapid national action to support and defend the oppressed."

It stressed the coalition's position of "standing by the just demands of the people in the southern provinces to remove all the marks of the 1994 war."

It described the developments in southern Yemen as "dangerous" saying it "resulted om the dangerous escalation that the authorities resorted to through intensifying the use of force, arrests and hunting" of activists.

The disturbances in southern Yemen are one of three major challenges facing the Sanaa government.

 It has also had to contend with a bloody six-year conflict with Shiite rebels in the north, which ended with a truce last month.

Yemen is also the ancestral homeland of Al-Qaeda and the government has stepped up its campaign against the jihadists since the network's Yemeni branch claimed responsibility for the botched

  December 26 bombing of a US airliner bound for Detroit

AFP