Bodyguard killed in attack on Yemeni minister

Gunmen strafed the car of Yemeni Information Minister Ali Ahmed al-Amrani with bullets on Thursday, killing his bodyguard, but the official was not in the vehicle at the time, officials said. "Armed men fired shots at the information minister's car, killing his bodyguard," a security official told AFP. "The minister, who was not in the car at the time of the attack, was apparently the attackers' target." The assailants sprayed the car with bullets as it stopped outside a pharmacy. A ministerial source confirmed the attack and the death of the bodyguard, whose name was not given. Amrani also escaped an assassination attempt on January 31 as he was leaving government headquarters in Sanaa. The minister, a member of the opposition named to the post in December as part of a deal that led to the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in February, was also unhurt on that occasion. Amrani was a member of Saleh's General People's Congress who joined the opposition along with several other party members in March 2011 in protest over a deadly crackdown on anti-regime protests by the president's loyalists. The January attack was the first on a government official since a unity government was formed on December 7 under the Gulf-brokered power transfer deal that gave an equal number of seats to the GPC and opposition. At the time of the first assassination bid Saleh was in the United States for medical treatment after being seriously wounded in a bombing at the presidential palace in Sanaa in June 2011.