By DPA,
Sana’a/Vienna : Two separate attacks in Yemen Wednesday saw a Frenchman shot dead at his office and three locals injured in a rocket attack on a car belonging to the deputy chief of the British mission to the strife-torn country.
A Yemeni guard shot dead the French citizen at the Austrian energy firm OMV’s Yemen office in Sana’a, security sources and witnesses said, adding that the attacker was then apprehended by policemen.
A British employee was also injured in the shooting, OMV said.
An investigation has been launched to determine if the attack by the guard, who was employed by a security firm, was politically motivated or simply a criminal act.
“OMV currently sees no political background for the action taken by the Yemeni security guard,” the company said in a statement, noting that it has closed its offices in the Hadda district of the Yemeni capital.
The victim, who was not identified, was an employee of the French industrial engineering company SPIE and was attached to OMV, the French foreign ministry in Paris confirmed.
The British embassy vehicle, meanwhile, had been targeted in Sana’a earlier Wednesday, with a rocket-propelled grenade injuring three passers-by, a security source said.
The source told DPA that no embassy staff were hurt in the attack, which took place on a road leading to the embassy in the Noqum area, in the east of the city.
Witnesses said two men disguised in green street-cleaner uniforms fired a shell at the car as it passed them on the Thalatheen street.
“The car was hit in the back and continued driving away,” Muhammad Naji, a witness, told DPA at the scene.
He and other witnesses said the embassy car ran over a woman and her daughter after it was hit by the rocket. They were rushed to hospital, they said.