Iran Diplomat Fatally Wounded in Yemen Shooting

An Iranian diplomat was fatally wounded in a drive-by shooting outside the ambassador's residence in the Yemeni capital Saturday, the third attack on embassy personnel in recent months, a medic said.

The medic at Sanaa's Modern German Hospital told Agence France Presse that diplomat, Ali Asghar Assadi, had been "hit in the shoulder, abdomen and stomach."

"He was taken to the operating theater then transferred to intensive care but died after an hour and half."

Iran confirmed the death and swiftly condemned what it said was a new kidnap attempt against one of its diplomats in Yemen. In July, embassy staffer Nour-Ahmad Nikbakht was abducted by suspected al-Qaida militants, and tribal sources say he remains in captivity.

"Ali Asghar Assadi, the Iranian diplomat who had been injured in the terrorist attack in Sanaa, was martyred," foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham told the official IRNA news agency.

Earlier, Afkham said "a terrorist group attacked him and attempted to kidnap him but he resisted and the terrorists resorted to shooting.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly condemns this incident and will follow up on the case with the Yemeni authorities," she added in remarks to Iran's ISNA news agency.

Witnesses said the assailants had opened up with automatic weapons before taking off.

A police source told AFP that "unidentified assailants in a van fired on the diplomat three times as he was leaving the ambassador's residence near a shopping center in Hadda," the main diplomatic district of Sanaa.

The attack comes amid deadly fighting in northern Yemen between Sunni Islamists and Zaidi Shiite rebels whom their opponents charge are receiving support from Shiite Iran.

The army deployed in the battleground town of Dammaj earlier this month to supervise a local truce between the Shiite rebels and Sunni hardliners but the deadly conflict had already spread to other northern provinces.

There has been a spate of attacks targeting foreigners in the Yemeni capital in recent months.

On December 15, the Japanese consul was seriously wounded after being dragged from his car in Hadda and repeatedly stabbed.

On November 26, gunmen killed one Belarussian defense contractor and wounded another as they left their Sanaa hotel.

And on October 6, a German embassy guard was killed as he resisted an attempt to kidnap him.

Yemen is the ancestral homeland of slain al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and its local affiliate, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is regarded by Washington as among the jihadist network's most dangerous.

The group carries out frequent hit-and-run attacks on security personnel in its strongholds in the south and east.

But it has also carried out spectacular attacks in the capital, including a brazen daylight assault on the defense ministry last month that killed 56 people, among them foreign medical staff.

A South African teacher who was kidnapped by AQAP along with his wife in Yemen's second city Taiz last May is still alive but in poor health, an organisation working to free him said on Saturday.

A deadline to pay $3 million (2.2 million euros) in ransom to spare 56-year-old Pierre Korkie his life expired on Friday, but a Yemeni mediator confirmed that it has now been extended for three weeks.

Mediator Anas al-Hamati helped secure the release of Korkie's wife Yolande on January 10.

The couple had lived and worked in Yemen for four years.