Random Bombings Today in Yemen
Tourists killed in Yemen blast
SANAA (AFP) — Four South Korean tourists were killed and four more wounded by an explosion in the historic city of Shibam in southeast Yemen on Sunday, a security official in Hadramawt province said.
In January 2008 two Belgian tourists were shot dead along with their local guide and driver in Hadramawt.
Two months later, the US embassy was the target of mortar fire which missed and hit a school, killing two people.
A car bomb attack in Marib, also east of Sanaa, in July 2007 killed eight Spanish holidaymakers and two Yemeni drivers.
That attack took place at the entrance to Mahram Bilqis, an ancient oval-shaped temple which legend says belonged to the Biblical Queen of Sheba.
In January the local Al-Qaeda branch announced in a video message posted on the Internet the merging of the Saudi and Yemeni branches into "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," led by a Yemeni called Nasser al-Wahaishi.
Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, and Al-Qaeda has launched many operations there -- notably the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the port of Aden that killed 17 sailors.
The US embassy in the capital was targeted last September by a double car bomb attack claimed by Al-Qaeda that killed 19 people, including seven attackers.
Some Western embassies are now concealed behind five-metre-high (16-foot) blast walls, and some diplomats have said they believe there is an influx of "terrorists" in Yemen.
In April 2008 a complex of villas inhabited by US oil experts in Sanaa was hit by rockets, and the same month the Italian embassy also came under attack.
Oil installations have also been frequent targets in Yemen, which had a modest production of 300,000 barrels a day in 2008.
A security official in Sanaa said on February 8 the authorities had decided to release 176 people suspected of links to Al-Qaeda, without saying why.
Sixteen days later a security court sentenced three members of an alleged Al-Qaeda cell to seven years each in jail.
They were convicted of conspiring to attack tourists and government facilities to avenge the killing of an Al-Qaeda commander in August last year.
Few tourists visit Yemen, which also has a history of abductions of Westerners by powerful tribes who then use them as bargaining chips with the authorities. Those kidnapped are generally freed unharmed.