U.S. Ambassador in Yemen Meets Saleh's Deputy

SANAA, Yemen – Yemen's vice president held talks with US ambassador Gerald Feierstein on Sunday after injured president Ali Abdullah Saleh was hospitalized in Saudi Arabia, state news agency Saba reported.

"Yemen's Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi received today [Sunday] the US ambassador in Yemen, Gerald Feierstein," reported Saba.

News of the meeting came as Saleh continued to receive treatment after he was injured in an attack on his presidential palace in the capital Sanaa.

Saleh landed at the King Khalid Air Base in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Saturday on board a Saudi aircraft and was transferred to a military hospital.

The embattled leader was believed to have walked off the plane but had "burns and scratches to the face and chest."

An unnamed official with Yemen's ruling General People's Congress said Saleh was "lightly wounded in the back of the head."

However, there were local reports that Saleh, 69, was suffering second-degree burns and had a piece of shrapnel near his heart.

Saleh was wounded Friday when a shell hit the presidential palace's mosque during prayers, killing 11 and wounding 124 people, according to a government official.

Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mujawar and four other senior Yemeni officials wounded in the shelling were also transferred to Saudi Arabia for treatment, Saba reported.

But on the streets of Sanna, young protesters Sunday celebrated what they said was the fall of Yemen's regime.

"Today, Yemen is newborn," sang dozens of youths in Sanaa's University Square -- dubbed "Change Square" -- the epicenter of anti-regime protests. "This is it, the regime has fallen," others chanted.

Also Sunday, a military official said that al Qaeda militants had killed nine Yemeni soldiers in two separate ambush attacks on their convoys in the southern province of Abyan.

"A military reinforcement convoy coming from Aden was ambushed south of Zinjibar on Saturday killing six and wounding others," the official said.