UK diplomat's car attacked in Yemen

The attacks bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda which has threatened to strike against Western targets and the government of Yemen, which earlier this year declared war on the group's local arm after it claimed a failed attack on a U.S.-bound airliner in December.

In London, the British Foreign Office said a missile was fired at a British embassy vehicle in Sanaa carrying the deputy chief of the British mission and one British embassy staff member in the vehicle suffered a minor injury.

"The vehicle was on its way to the British embassy, with

five embassy staff on board," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

"One member of staff suffered minor injuries and is undergoing treatment, all others were unhurt."

A security source in Yemen said three Yemeni bystanders were wounded. President Ali Abdullah Saleh later met the British ambassador to discuss the incident.

The Frenchman died in a shooting incident inside the compound of Austrian-owned oil and gas group OMV France's Foreign Ministry said.

A security source said a Yemeni guard working for a private security firm went on a shooting spree, and government forces subsequently disarmed him.

Both attacks followed tightened security in the capital of

the embattled country whose conflicts with a resurgent al Qaeda,

secessionists in the south and Shi'ite rebels in the north has

raised Western and Gulf Arab fears it is on the verge of

becoming a failed state.

Those fears worsened after the Yemen-based arm of al Qaeda

claimed responsibility for the botched bombing of the U.S.-bound

airliner. The group also said it was behind a failed

assassination attempt on the deputy interior minister of Saudi

Arabia, Yemen's neighbour and the world's top oil exporter.

An al Qaeda suicide bomber attacked the British ambassador's

convoy in April, killing himself and injuring three others.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said it was behind that

attack, accusing the British envoy of leading a war on Muslims

in the peninsula.

Yemen's population of unemployed youths are seen as

potential recruits for Islamist fighters, and Western donor

nations including Britain backed Yemen in its fight against al

Qaeda at a United Nations meeting in New York last month.

More than 40 percent of Yemen's 23 million people live on

less than $2 a day, and concerns about instability and

corruption have hampered growth and made unemployment worse.

The mountainous country, facing the Horn of Africa, could

run out of oil reserves within a decade and water resources are

depleted. It has introduced some fuel subsidy reforms as it

struggles to reduce high fiscal deficits.