SANAA, 12 June 2004 — A gunman shot dead four worshippers and wounded six others at a mosque in central Yemen during Friday prayers yesterday and police said the attacker was killed later in clashes with security forces.
The assailant, Abdul-Fattah Saleh Al-Ghamri, 34, stormed the crowded mosque and opened fire randomly with a machine gun, tribal leaders told Arab News by telephone from the Jabal Al-Lessi village in Dhamar, some 100 kilometers south of the capital Sanaa.
Yemeni Interior Ministry said in a statement the attacker was killed in an exchange of fire with security forces who surrounded his house after he had managed to flee the scene.
The police statement said an investigation on the motives of the attack was under way, but local residents said the man had a quarrel with two of the worshippers earlier in the day.
According to another official, security forces surrounded his home but the man refused to surrender, finally killing his sister and himself. The shooting was the latest in a series of attacks on mosques in the country.
Armed violence in mosques is not uncommon in tribal areas of Yemen, where men carry firearms publicly and tribes often settle disputes with guns.
Five people including a woman were killed and 30 others injured on March 5, when an armed man hurled two hand grenades and opened fire in a village mosque in Dhamar. The assailant, who later killed himself, left a written note in which he said the attack aimed at “purging the village of putridity.”
On Oct. 27, a worshipper was shot dead and two others were injured in a shooting rampage at a mosque in Dhamar after a dispute over prayers.
In August, three worshippers were killed and 34 others injured 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 in southern Yemen on July 30, 2003.
