No sectarian row in mosque shootout - Yemen ministry

The Yemeni Ministry of Interior denied news reports that a dispute between Sunnis and Shiites was the reason behind Monday's shootout in a mosque, which killed one and injured two others.

"The shootout, which happened on Monday in the mosque and led to the death of one person and was due to a tussle between those incharge of the mosque and some elements who entered the holy place and wanted to use the loudspeakers by force for the Taraweeh prayer," the official news agency Saba quoted a Ministry of Interior official as saying.

This contravenes the instructions of the Ministry of Endowments, which prevents the use of loudspeakers in mosques except for the five prayers.

The incident happened at Al Saeed mosque, Dhammar city, some 100km south of the capital Sanaa, after the Eisha prayers, when a group of Sunnis started Taraweeh prayers and a group of Shiites tried to get them out of the mosque.

Local sources in Dhammar made it clear that the local authority had told people on the first day of Ramadan not to pray collectively Taraweeh in the recently-built mosque to avoid conflicts between those who support this "superfluous" worship (Sunnis) and those who refuse it (Shiites).

In a statement issued in Dhammar, the Islah, the largest Islamic-oriented opposition party, deplored the incident describing it as an "ugly crime", which shocked the city because it happened in one of Allah's houses.

Hassan Al Yari, chairman of the local executive bureau of Islah demanded the concerned authorities to quickly and transparently investigate into the issue and refer the perpetrators to justice.

On their part, the tribesmen to whom the murdered belonged mobilised their supporters yesterday around the houses of local authority officials demanding the surrender of the killer who is not know yet, even though local sources said that four men were arrested and put under investigation.