Al Qaida men held after Sanaa shootout

Two Al Qaida suspects were killed and two security men were injured early yesterday in the capital Sanaa after a two-hour shootout between the security forces and a group of Al Qaida suspects, sources said.

The Yemen official news agency Saba said the security forces raided a house in the northern suburb of Sanaa city where Al Qaida suspects were residing.

"Before detaining three of them, two Al Qaida suspects and two security men were injured due to fire exchange," the agency quoted a security official as saying.

One of the injured died instantly and the other succumbed to injuries, medical sources told Gulf News.

At least three Al Qaida suspects escaped after the clashes that took place late in the night.

This comes only a week after the U.S. Ambassador to Sanaa Edmond Hull's warning against terrorist threats in Yemen. "Terrorist threats still exist in Yemen," Hull said.

Late last month, two bomb makers were killed when a bomb prematurely went off in an apartment housing a group of people who were planning to target U.S. interests in Yemen.

The security forces found various weapons and explosives in the apartment after the bombing revealed the plot.

Yemen denied that elements who escaped from Afghanistan are using Yemen as a safe haven saying this news is baseless and untrue.

Late last week, however, the government said an Arab country had handed to it 19 men from those who escaped in the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan. They are in custody under investigation, the government says.

"Yemen is against terrorism in all its forms, and it is supporting the international effort to eradicate terrorism," said a government statement late Friday.

The statement described the Yemen U.S. cooperation as satisfactory to both sides and stressing that it must not be affected by the latest detentions.

Detention of Yemeni elements in Afghanistan, Pakistan or American elements of Yemeni origin, as accused of being Al Qaida elements should not affect at all on the good cooperation between the two countries, the statement clarified.

According to the statement, Yemen demands that the U.S. be just and fair with those detained by U.S. forces and its allies whether in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or those recently detained in America.