Four S. Korean tourists killed in Yemen bomb blast

(ATTN: UPDATES throughout with dispatch of officials, new announcement on number of
wounded, statement, other details)
By Lee Chi-dong
SEOUL, March 16 (Yonhap) -- A team of South Korean government officials left
Monday for Yemen, where four South Korean tourists were killed and three others
wounded in what appears to be a terrorist attack.
A bomb went off at around 11:50 p.m. on Sunday (Seoul time) in the city of Syoun,
about 500km east of the capital Sanna, while the tourists from Seoul were out
taking pictures at sunset, Seoul's foreign ministry said.
It added that the South Korean victims included two men and two women, all of
whom were on a group tour. Their Yemeni guide was also killed, according to local
police.
The ministry previously said four Koreans were wounded in the incident but later
revised the number to three.
Their injuries were light enough for them to walk on their own, and the eleven
other members of the tour group were sent to the capital on a special plane
provided by the Yemeni authorities, a senior ministry official told reporters.
"The possibility of a terrorist attack targeted at foreigners can't be ruled
out," he said. "We are waiting for the results of an investigation by the Yemeni
government."
No organization has claimed responsibility for the explosion yet, he added.
If confirmed to be a terrorist attack, it would be the latest against foreigners
in the Arab nation known as a center of militant activity by al-Qaeda and other
extremists, according to the ministry.
The government called an emergency meeting of related agencies, chaired by Vice
Foreign Minister Shin Kak-soo, on Monday morning to discuss the incident. A team
of four officials was later dispatched to Yemen led by a deputy director-general
official at the foreign ministry. Others on the team include representatives from
the police and state intelligence agencies and another foreign ministry official.
The team is expected to arrive in Yemen on Tuesday morning via Dubai.
The foreign ministry formally expressed regret over the incident.
"The government expresses deep condolence to the victims and the bereaved
families," ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said in a statement. "The government
will cooperate closely with the Yemeni government to deal smoothly with the
incident and quickly shed light on the cause of it."
Meanwhile, the ministry has designated Yemen as a "travel restriction area," a
non-binding measure which strongly advises citizens not to travel there.
The advisory had been in effect for Syoun and several other cities in the Arab
nation known as the ancestral homeland of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whose
group has executed a number of attacks on Western tourists in the country,
including the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole off the port of Aden
that killed 17 American sailors.
Yemeni security officials told foreign news agencies that Sunday's bombing was
probably a terrorist attack but added it could also have been caused by
unrecovered dynamite.
lcd@yna.co.kr
(END)