By IINA,
Sana’a : Eight people were killed when a gunman described as mentally unbalanced opened fire inside a mosque in a village north of the Yemeni capital during Friday prayers, an official said. “A man opened fire on worshippers in a mosque in the village of Kahal (60 kilometers north of Sanaa),” killing eight people and wounding nine others, AFP reported quoting the official as saying. An earlier toll said five people were killed in the attack — the second in a month on a mosque in Yemen — and 12 wounded, 10 seriously. “The person behind the shooting was arrested and has been taken for questioning,” said the official on condition of anonymity. He declined to identify the suspect but said he “is believed to be mentally unbalanced.”
On May 2, 18 people, mostly soldiers, were killed when a booby-trapped motorcycle exploded at the entrance to a mosque in an attack blamed on Shiite rebels who have been waging a four-year uprising against the government. That attack was in the northwestern town of Saada in the province where most of the clashes between the Zaidi rebels and government forces have taken place. In a separate incident, assailants yesterday targeted an oil pipeline in southern Yemen with two rockets that exploded without causing damage, witnesses said.
The attack, which was not immediately claimed by any group, targeted the pipeline linking a refinery and an oil terminal in the southern city of Aden, the witnesses said. Al-Qaeda has been blamed for a series of attacks across Yemen.
Yesterday’s violence came just a day after the authorities announced they had broken up an Al-Qaeda cell in the capital Sanaa and arrested 11 suspects. Al-Qaeda’s wing in Yemen, which calls itself Jund Al-Yemen Brigades, has carried out a series of attacks in recent months targeting the US and Italian embassies and a residential complex that is home to US oil workers. In one of the deadliest attacks against foreigners in recent years, eight Spanish tourists were killed and six wounded when a suicide-bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a convoy at an ancient temple in July last year in the northeastern region of Marib.