A provincial government source said one man was killed and several were wounded late on Saturday as the police tried to enforce a government ban on unauthorised protests.

Yemen, one of the poorest countries outside Africa, banned on Friday demonstrations organised without official permission. The move came after opposition parties staged several protests in recent weeks to demand state measures to curb rising prices of consumer goods.

Government officials say the rise is due to a spike in the prices of commodities such as wheat in global markets.

The government has ordered state bodies to import such goods and provide them to citizens at fair prices and ensure that they are not monopolised by local merchants.

Four out of 10 Yemenis live on less than $2 a day, according to Britan's Department for International Development, which says Yemen's oil, its main earnings source, is expected to dry up by 2015.

Yemen's oil production dropped to around 300,000 barrels per day from around 380,000 bpd at the beginning of the year.