Nine killed in Yemen bombing

Submitted by Tarique Anwar on 3 July 2007 - 7:11am.

By IANS

Madrid : Seven Spanish tourists were killed and five wounded in a suicide car bomb attack near an archaeological site in Yemen, the Spanish news agency EFE said.


Two Yemeni drivers were also killed in the attack Monday, authorities in the Yemen capital Sana'a said.

Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said here the injured Spaniards were being taken to hospitals in the Yemen capital.

The attack took place in the eastern province of Marib, some 190 km from Sana'a, where the bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a convoy of four vehicles packed with tourists who were visiting the roughly 3,000-year-old temple of Balqis, a site connected to the ancient Queen of Sheba.

Yemeni military vehicles accompanied the convoy.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet, but Yemeni authorities said the bombing bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda, whose local branch threatened last week to avenge the arrest of some of its members.

Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, and Al Qaeda has been blamed for the assault in 2000 against the destroyer USS Cole in the country's main port city Aden, in which 17 US sailors died.

Another attack, also attributed to Al Qaeda, occurred two years later against a French oil tanker and left two people dead.