DUBAI: A Yemeni security guard who shot dead a Frenchman at an Austrian energy firm’s compound near Sanaa this week was driven by "personal motives", Yemen’s interior ministry said on Friday.
Yemeni security sources said earlier this week initial indications were that al Qaeda militants were behind the attack as well as the firing of a rocket-propelled grenade also on Monday at a British diplomat’s car in Sanaa.
"First investigations with the accused show it likely that … the crime was committed out of personal motives," an interior ministry statement on government website "26 September" said (www.26sep.net).
"This conclusion is only preliminary and not a final verdict since the investigations is just at the beginning," it added.
The statement named the guard as Hisham Mohammed Mohammed Assem, a 19-year-old from the Taizz province who lives in Sanaa.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an arm of Al Qaeda thought to be include mainly Yemenis and Saudis, has not issued any claim of responsibility for either attack. An al Qaeda suicide bomber was to kill the British ambassador in April.
AQAP has struck more often at Yemeni and Western targets since Sanaa declared "war" on the group, with U.S. support, after it claimed a failed U.S. airliner bombing in December.
Occasional American missile strikes to back the crackdown have sometimes killed civilians as well as militants — an embarrassment to a government aware of the fiercely anti-U.S. sentiments of many Yemenis in a Muslim country awash with guns.
Analysts say Yemen’s government, also facing southern secessionists and northern Shi’ite rebels, is keen to benefit from Western backing and show that Yemen is paying dearly for its sometimes questioned commitment to combating al Qaeda.
A government website said on Tuesday that Yemen had lost $12 billion in tourism and investment since al Qaeda bombed a U.S. warship in Aden harbour in 2000, killing 17 sailors.
It said the security forces had lost 64 dead in fighting with al Qaeda since a crackdown began in mid-August.
More than two in five Yemen’s 23 million people live on less than $2 a day. A third do not have enough food for their needs, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.
