SANAA, 22 December 2002 — Yemeni forces launched a hunt for Al-Qaeda gunmen yesterday after a policeman and a suspect died in a shootout with the wanted terror network believed to have blown up a French supertanker, officials said.

Police arrested nine family members of the gunmen, officials reported.

Large numbers of reinforcements poured into the southern province of Hadramaut and roadblocks were set up on main roads.

Several suspects managed to escape after the gunbattle Friday, which also left four people wounded, the officials and witnesses said.

Security forces had by Thursday tracked the gang down to a house west of the port of Al-Mukalla, where the Oct. 6 explosion on the oil tanker occurred.

Shooting erupted the following day around the three-story building, some 850 kilometers southeast of the capital Sanaa.

The militants also lobbed a grenade at police.

“Two people, including a police officer, were killed, and four others, two of them policemen, were injured,” a hospital official said.

Witnesses said among those who fled was Shaker Hamel and Abdel Hakem Abduo, wanted by the government as suspects in the Limburg attack. They are also suspected of having coordinated and funded several terrorist attacks in Yemen which has been plagued by suspected terrorist violence for years.

More than 20 suspects have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the bombing, which crippled the French tanker Limburg and killed a Bulgarian sailor off Al-Mukalla, on the Arabian Sea.

An explosives-packed boat rammed the hull of the tanker causing it to spill 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.

A similar attack on the destroyer USS Cole two years ago killed 17 US sailors. That attack also was blamed on Al-Qaeda.

After the Sept. 11 attacks Yemen allowed American forces into the country to train its military to combat terrorists.

Meanwhile, police clashed with about 2,000 people protesting dismissals in the provincial town of Dhale, some 200 kilometers south the capital Sanaa, yesterday. At least seven protesters were arrested.

The demonstrators took to the streets to demand that the government reinstate 400 teachers who had been fired for holding more than one state job. They were also protesting recent appointments made by provincial governor Saleh Al-Jneid. The teachers’ union organized the protest.

The protesters threw stones and blocked the main road between the capital and the southern city of Aden, police said.

Police fired shots into the air and used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, officials said.

A police officer said they arrested seven people, including the organizers of the demonstration. However, an official of the teachers’ union said the police arrested more than 15 people. Among those arrested was a reporter for the Islamist opposition newspaper Al-Sahwa.

The police officer and the union official spoke on condition of anonymity.

A government investigation recently found that about 17,000 civil servants were registered for two government jobs — an illegal method of increasing one’s income. (Agencies)