Car blast kills Briton in Yemen port city Aden
ADEN/SANAA (Reuters) - A blast in a booby-trapped car killed a British shipping surveyor in Yemen's southern port city of Aden on Wednesday, local officials and shipping sources said.
A security source told Reuters he believed militants were behind the blast that killed the long-time resident of Aden, who was in his 60s, when he started his car.
The victim was an independent surveyor for a marine and insurance company in Yemen. A Western shipping source based in Aden said the Briton had just returned from surveying a tanker attacked in July by pirates off Yemen's coast.
"We tend to think that it was some kind of terrorist attack because he was well known," the security source said.
Attacks on foreigners are rare in the port city, which lies east of a strategic shipping lane through which some 3 million barrels of oil pass daily.
Witnesses said the man's car exploded as soon as he turned on the engine, shattering windows in nearby buildings on Aden's Mualla Plaza.
"He started the car and it immediately exploded and he was engulfed in flames," a witness said by telephone.
One passer-by was critically wounded in the blast, which also damaged nearby buildings, a municipal official said. She said there was no clue as to who was behind the explosion.
"It's clear that there was some kind of explosive device placed in his car," she said.
A spokesman from Britain's Foreign Office confirmed the death of a British national in the Aden blast, and said the British embassy in Sanaa had been in contact with Yemeni officials, who were investigating the explosion.
Aden has been relatively quiet in recent months, even as mass protests demanding the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh drag into a sixth month, with sporadic bursts of violence.
The neighbouring Abyan province has been plunged into daily bloodshed since Islamist militants seized the city of Jaar in March and the provincial capital of Zinjibar in May.
The army, which says the militants are part of al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing, launched an offensive to retake Zinjibar five days ago but has yet to regain the city.
Security was tightened around Aden several weeks ago to try to prevent more militants from slipping into the strategic port city. Some 54,000 Abyan residents have sought refuge in Aden.
OPPOSITION ATTACKED
The United States and neighbouring oil giant Saudi Arabia have grown increasingly worried about the turmoil in Yemen -- the Arab world's poorest country. Riyadh and Washington, both targets of foiled al Qaeda attacks orchestrated from Yemen, fear rising instability provides militants with room to operate.
In a separate incident on Wednesday, an opposition official from the leading Islamist party Islah survived an attack by gunmen in the capital of Sanaa, the opposition said.
Sanaa has witnessed rising violence in recent days following weeks of relative calm after Saleh travelled to Saudi Arabia for treatment on wounds he suffered in a bomb blast at his compound.
Gunmen fired on Islah leader Mohammed al-Yadumi's car on Monday but he escaped the attack, Yemen's opposition coalition said. The group blamed forces loyal to Saleh.
"We hold the heads of national security, the Republican Guard, Special Forces and central security responsible for this criminal incident," the coalition said in a statement.
(Reporting by Mohammed Mukhashaf in Aden, Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa, Humeyra Pamuk in Dubai and Stephen Mangan in London; Writing by Erika Solomon; Editing by Alistair Lyon)