Blasts near US Embassy

SAN'A - EXPLOSIONS and heavy gunfire were heard on Wednesday morning in the vicinity of the US Embassy in the Yemeni capital and police swiftly cordoned off the area, witnesses said.

Al Arabiya Television said that the initial blast was caused by a suspected car bomb and that there were believed to be casualties.

Yemeni officials were not immediately available to comment on the cause of the blasts or the number of casualties, but ambulances and fire engines rushed to the scene and police cordoned off the area.

A US embassy official declined to comment.

An embassy employee contacted by telephone inside the mission's compound in the eastern sector of San'a would only say that 'there has been a security incident.'

Regional TV networks, however, are reporting a car bomb explosion outside the embassy and an exchange of gunfire between guards and unidentified assailants. A fire broke out in one of the embassy's buildings, they say.

The reports, which could not be independently confirmed, made no mention of casualties.

In March, three mortar rounds targeting the US Embassy crashed into a high school for girls next door, killing a Yemeni security guard and wounding more than a dozen girls.

The US Embassy in Yemen, which is the ancestral homeland of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has been the focus of violence in the past.

In March 2002, a Yemeni man lobbed a sound grenade into the US embassy grounds a day after Vice-President Dick Cheney made a stop for talks with officials at San'a airport.

The attacker, who allegedly sought to retaliate against what he called American bias toward Israel, was sentenced to 10 years in prison but the sentence was later reduced to seven years.

In March 2003, two people were fatally shot and dozens more were injured when police clashed with demonstrators trying to storm the embassy when tens of thousands rallied against the US-led invasion of Iraq.

In 2006, a gunman opened fire outside the embassy but was shot and arrested by Yemeni guards. The gunman, armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, claimed he wanted to kill Americans.

Al-Qaeda has an 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 American sailors and an attack on a French oil tanker that killed one person two years later.

The United States ordered non-essential staff to leave Yemen in April, a day after an attack on a residential compound.

The Yemeni government joined the US-led war against terrorism following the Sept 11 attacks on US cities.

The government of the poor Arab country has also been fighting Shi'ite rebels in the northern province of Saada since 2004 and faced protests against unemployment and inflation.