US helps investigate Yemen shooting

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

“We have a team in Marib assisting Yemeni authorities with the investigation,” a US diplomat said in the capital San’a.

A Yemeni man yesterday shot the four men as they worked in an oil field in the northern province of Marib, 100 miles north-east of San‘a. He then shot himself dead.

Hunt Oil, which is based in Dallas, Texas and employed the American victim, said the four were working at a rig owned and operated by Nabors Drilling Company.

Yemeni officials said the motive for the attack was believed to be personal and that the assailant, Naji Abdullah al-Kumaim, had worked for Nabors for seven years and had suffered from depression.

Hunt Oil said the two Canadians and the Yemeni victim, in addition to the killer, were Nabors employees.

Al-Kumaim’s colleagues said he was not known to have previous political affiliations, they said, and had been shouting during the shooting that he would take revenge against people who were filing reports about him.

Hunt Oil said it had suspended drilling operations in Yemen “for the foreseeable future”.

Gun violence is not unusual in the largely lawless tribal areas of Yemen, but the country also has been the scene of several Islamic militant terror attacks on Western targets in recent years.