SANAA, 7 March 2004 — Five people were killed and 30 others injured on Friday when an armed man hurled two hand grenades and opened fire in a village mosque in the central Yemeni province of Dhamar, police and witnesses said.

A police official in Dhamar, some 100 kilometers south of the capital Sanaa, said the attacker, identified as Abdullah Ahmad Yahia Ghassan, shot and killed himself after police cordoned off his home in the Mikhlaf Samat village of the Utoma district.

The attacker left a note in which he said the attack aimed at “purging the village of putridity”, the official said in a statement carried by the Saba news agency. The man had family problems and was “mentally disturbed,” according to the statement.

Among the dead was one woman. The attacker threw the hand grenades and opened fire from a rifle during the weekly Friday prayers. Police officials said the injured people were rushed to a hospital in the nearby Al-Sharq district.

Armed violence is common in tribal areas of Yemen. On Oct. 27, a worshiper was gunned down and two others were wounded in a shooting spree at a mosque in Dhamar after a dispute over prayers.

In August, three worshipers were killed and 34 others wounded when an armed man hurled two hand grenades at a mosque northern Yemen during weekly prayers.

A gunman shot dead eight people in an unexplained shooting spree at a mosque southern Yemen in July.