A shooting rampage in Yemen by a man later described as “deranged” left eight dead and wounded more than two dozen worshippers inside a mosque during Friday prayers in a predominantly Shiite town north of the capital.
A Yemeni security official said the attacker just walked into the mosque during the weekly sermon and opened fire with his assault rifle. The gunman was soon taken into custody.
The security official later said that “it turned out that the man who carried out the assault is deranged.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Among the 26 wounded, 10 were in critical condition, he said.
The attack took place in the town of Kohal, in Amran, a predominantly Shiite province just north of the capital Sana. Yemen is a predominantly Sunni country.
It was the second attack this month on a mosque in northern Yemen, where such attacks were once rare and where analysts say that targeting of mosques represents a dangerous escalation in the northern conflict.
The area’s tribal leaders, who asked not to be identified by name because they feared government reprisal, dismissed the claim that the attacker was mentally ill. They said he was a 32-year-old man who works as a driver for a legislator in the area.
On May 2, a booby trapped motorcycle exploded outside a Shiite mosque in the northern town of Saadah, near the Saudi border, as worshippers were leaving, killing 18.
That area in northern Yemen is the site of a rebellion by Shiite Muslims of the al-Zaydi sect that erupted in 2004 and has since killed thousands. It is not immediately clear if the Amran attack, which happened 150km to the south, was connected.
The government of predominantly Sunni Yemen blamed that mosque bombing of the on rebel leader Abdel-Malek al-Hawthi, who is leading the rebellion. But al-Hawthi denied involvement.
The Shiite rebels accuse the government of corruption and of being too closely allied with the West. The government accuses al-Hawthi of sedition, forming an illegal armed group and inciting anti-US sentiment.
In a separate incident, a police official said that two Katyusha rockets were fired at an oil refinery in the Yemeni port of Aden but there was no word of casualties.
The official said that al-Qaeda is believed to be behind attack.
Yemen is the ancestral homeland of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The group has active presence in Yemen despite government efforts to destroy it.
The group was blamed for the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole destroyer in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 US sailors and an attack on a French oil tanker that killed one person two years later.
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