AFP - A bomb wounded two Yemeni civilians in Daleh on Thursday, as police fired warning shots to disperse protestors in the southern town hit by a series of strikes, activists said.

The bomb, which was planted on the side of a main road, struck two passers-by, a leading activist from the secessionist Southern Movement said requesting anonymity.

Elsewhere, police fired into the air to disperse thousands of protests who waved flags of the former independent south and chanted slogans calling for prisoners to be freed, the same source said.

Yemeni jails hold about 400 southern militants, according to estimates by the Southern Movement.

Similar demonstrations were held in the town of Habilain, in Lahej province, and Lawder and Moudiya in Abyan.

Daleh was paralysed Monday by a general strike, called by the Southern Movement, a grouping of parties, some of which demand the south's full secession.

The strikers are demanding the lifting of a blockade that government forces imposed on the town.

The council of the Peaceful Revolution of the South, a coalition of southern movements, has declared every Thursday "prisoner's day," and organises weekly protests to mark the occasion.

Pro-independence protests have multiplied in the south amid a worsening economic situation in Yemen and charges of discrimination in favour of northerners.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh promised Tuesday to free southern prisoners and to form a parliamentary committee in charge of investigating the situation in the impoverished country's south.

South Yemen was independent from 1967 until 1990 when it united with the north. The south seceded in 1994, sparking a short-lived conflict that ended when the south was overrun by northern troops.