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Rocket fired at British embassy vehicle in Yemen
SANAA | Wed Oct 6, 2010 4:25am EDT
SANAA (Reuters) - A rocket attack in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Wednesday targeted a vehicle carrying the deputy chief of the British mission in Yemen and a gunman opened fire at an Austrian oil and gas firm, killing a Frenchman. The shootings could be one of a number of high profile al Qaeda attacks directly targeting Yemen's government, which earlier this year declared war on the group's Yemeni arm after it claimed a failed attack on a U.S.-bound airliner in December.
Britain's Foreign Office in London confirmed there had been an attack involving a British embassy vehicle in Sanaa and said one British embassy staff member in the vehicle suffered a minor injury. A security source in Yemen said three Yemeni bystanders were wounded. The Frenchman died in a separate incident when a security guard opened fire inside the compound of oil and gas group OMV, a security source said.
Government security forces subsequently disarmed the gunman. A suspected al Qaeda suicide bomber attacked the British ambassador's convoy in April, killing himself and injuring three others. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said it was behind that attack, accusing the British envoy of leading a war on Muslims in the peninsula on Britain's behalf.
Oil-exporter Yemen is beset by problems. It faces rising al Qaeda militancy and a surge in violence in its secessionist leaning south. Yemen also has a shaky truce with northern Shi'ite rebels, reached in February to end a civil war that has raged on and off since 2004 and drew in neighboring Saudi Arabia last year after rebels seized some Saudi land.
More than 40 percent of its 23 million people live on less than $2 a day, and concerns about instability and widespread corruption have crimped growth and made unemployment worse. Yemen's Western allies and neighboring Saudi Arabia have long feared a resurgent al Qaeda wing could take advantage of rising insecurity and weak central control to use Yemen as a base for destabilizing attacks in the region and beyond.
The United States has been helping Sanaa out in the crackdown, fearing its campaign against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan had prompted the group's hub to shift to Yemen. Al Qaeda and the Yemeni government have clashed for many years, but the group's operations have typically focused on Western targets. An al Qaeda attack on the U.S. embassy in Sanaa in 2008 killed 16 people, including six attackers.
(Reporting by Mohamed Sudam; Writing by Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
