A MAN with an assault rifle killed a school headmistress, a teacher and six children yesterday in an attack on hundreds of pupils at two schools in the Yemeni capital, a security official said.
An Interior Ministry statement said 11 pupils from the two neighbouring schools and three other people were wounded. The security official named the headmistress as Ms Asma Noman, an Egyptian woman in her 40s whose son was also killed.
Police arrested the gunman after an exchange of fire with security forces in which he was wounded in the leg as he tried to escape. None of the security forces was reported hurt.
Witnesses described the assailant as a disgruntled former bus driver who had been sacked by the headmistress at the Tala'eh school. The security official said he believed the man was insane.
Witnesses said the attacks spread panic among the more than 1,000 students aged between six and 18 at Tala'eh and nearby Musa Ibn al Naseer school in the middle class residential suburb of Asbahi, about seven kms (four miles) south of the city centre. Some of them dived for cover while others fled.
The schools were closed after the shootings. Parents collected their children from classrooms instead of meeting them outside.
Witnesses said the attack was" the first incident of its kind in Sana'a.
Guns, many of them Kalashnikov automatic rifles are openly carried in Yemen, one of the Arab world's poorest countries. Unofficial estimates put the number of firearms in the country at nearly 50 million - three times the population of 16 million.
The witnesses said they believed the gunman, who walked from the first school to the second, was, angry over his sacking by the headmistress. Security forces said they were investigating.