A senior leader of Yemen’s al-Qaida branch has been killed in fighting in the nearly lawless south of the country, the Defence Ministry said.

YEMEN has stopped producing oil because of internal strife, a government official said, plunging the Arab world’s poorest nation into further economic decline.

Yemen has stopped producing oil because of internal strife, a government official said today, plunging a nation that is already the Arab world’s poorest into further economic decline.

Islamic militants seized control of a weapons factory, a strategic mountain and a nearby town in the southern Yemen province of Abyan today as a political stalemate in the capital causes security to unravel around the country.

HE is suspected of packing explosives into the underwear of a Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner last Christmas and sent his own brother on a suicide mission against a top Saudi official.

Security officials today said Yemen has deployed several hundred extra troops to two mountainous eastern provinces that are al-Qaida’s main strongholds in the country.

Tribal kidnappers have freed five Italian hostages whom they abducted in Yemen six days ago, a mediator said today.

Yemen’s prime minister said today his government would not negotiate with armed tribesmen holding five Italians hostage.

Tribesmen today kidnapped a family of five German tourists – reportedly including a former deputy foreign minister – to press the government for the release of jailed members of their tribe, Yemeni officials and the German government said.

US investigators are helping probe a shooting attack in Yemen that killed an American, a Canadian and a Yemeni, and wounded another Canadian.

A YEMENI shot dead an American and a Canadian working at a US oil firm in the Arab state yesterday and then killed himself, a Yemeni official said.

An American oil worker was killed today and another Westerner was wounded by a gunman in Yemen, tribesmen and oil company staff said.

Malaysia will not permit the United States to conduct air strikes and covert attacks against any terrorists, government leaders have said.

THE US Embassy in Yemen was closed for security reasons yesterday and protection of the building was increased after revelations that a US Hellfire missile fired from a CIA plane killed a senior member of the al-Qaida terror network.

OPENING up a visible new front in the war on terror, US forces launched a pinpoint missile strike in Yemen, killing a top al-Qaida operative in his car in the first such overt attack outside of Afghanistan, a US official said.

Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, al-Qaida’s top man in Yemen who was killed in a US air strike, had eluded capture for months by hiding in the desert and remote villages.

One of Osama bin Laden’s top operatives and five other suspected members of al-Qaida were killed today when their car blew up in Yemen.

Six suspected Muslim militants were killed in Yemen today when their car blew up.

A helicopter belonging to a US oil company crash-landed at San’a airport after it came under fire shortly after takeoff today, officials said.

Yemen has detained 80 foreign students and teachers from an Islamic fundamentalist institute during a clampdown on illegal residents.

Yemeni tanks and artillery are trying to flush out five suspected supporters of Osama bin Laden.