US Officers Killed Armed Civilians in Yemen Capital: Official

Two US officers shot and killed two armed civilians whotried to kidnap them last month in Yemen's capital, a State Department officialsaid Friday.

The two Americans were removed from Yemen shortly after theshooting, the official added.

"We can confirm that, last month, two US Embassyofficers in Yemen fired their weapons after being confronted by armedindividuals in an attempted kidnapping at a small commercial business inSanaa," deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a statementto AFP.

"Two of the armed individuals were killed. The embassyofficers are no longer in Yemen."

The incident occurred amid fresh tensions in the alreadytroubled nation after the army launched a major offensive against Al-Qaeda inthe Arabian Peninsula on April 29.

Suspected Al-Qaeda militants attacked Yemen's presidentialpalace earlier Friday, killing five guards and triggering a fierce gunfight asthe extremists hit back at the offensive.

President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi was not at the palace in thecapital when gunmen attacked a checkpoint manned by guards outside thecompound, a security source said.

The New York Times said a lieutenant colonel with the eliteUS Joint Special Operations Command and a Central Intelligence Agency officerwere involved in the shooting on April 24.

Some US officials told the newspaper that the two officerswere getting a haircut at a barbershop in an upscale district of the capitalpopular with foreigners rather than a clandestine operation, though it remainsunclear exactly what they were doing.

The Yemeni defence ministry indicated at the time that aforeigner had shot dead two gunmen who had tried to abduct him, but did notindicate the nationality of any of the people involved.

Security sources had said the man was a Russian expertworking in the oil sector, and that his attackers were Yemenis from the Maribregion east of Sanaa.

The case has parallels with the 2011 shooting of two men inLahore, Pakistan by CIA contractor Raymond Davis. The incident sparked adiplomatic row between Pakistan and the United States.

Davis was jailed for weeks and released after paying bloodmoney.

"There will certainly be an investigation and one wouldhave to assume it will be informed by what happened in Pakistan," a USofficial told the Times, hinting Washington was keen on avoiding a repeat ofthe tensions over the Lahore case with close counterterrorism ally Yemen.