AMRAN, Yemen, 8 April 2007 — Yemeni police yesterday arrested a man suspected of setting fire to a village mosque in the country’s northwest on Friday, leaving scores of worshippers burned, police officials said.
The fire gutted the mosque where some 100 worshippers were attending the weekly Friday prayers in Bait Al-Ammari village in the Amran province.
Police officer Yahya Maer told Arab News in Amran city that the suspect was being interrogated. He identified him as Hamid Al-Shoumi.
He said the “attacker appeared mentally ill when he was brought from the village early today. His motives are not clear yet, but he said he wanted to kill his father and brother who were among the worshippers.”
A doctor at the burns ward of the public hospital in Amran said the father and brother of the attacker were among the injured worshippers.
Witnesses said the attacker poured petrol on the worshippers, set them on fire and locked the mosque’s only door. Up to 70 people were taken to hospitals in Amran, around 50 km north of Sanaa.
More than 40 people suffered light burns and were discharged yesterday after they received treatment, hospital officials said. Nine people with severe burns were admitted to a hospital in Sanaa.
Local officials in Amran, which is close to the volatile province of Saada where army troops are battling Shiite rebels, said the attack was an isolated act and had no links with the Shiite rebellion.
It was the third attack on a mosque in Amran. In 2003, a man attacked a crowded mosque with a bomb, leaving three worshippers dead and more than 40 wounded. Four people were killed in a shooting spree in a mosque in 2001.
