<p><strong><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>Religion of Peace adherents kill Westerners</font></strong></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>Two female http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2941 tourists and their driver have been killed after gunmen ambushed their convoy in eastern Yemen, officials say.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>Four other Belgians were hurt in the attack in the province of Hadramut.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>The Yemeni authorities have launched a hunt for the attackers, who they believe to be al-Qaeda militants.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>Last July, seven Spaniards and two Yemenis were killed when a suicide car bomber attacked a group of tourists visiting a temple in central Yemen.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>The Belgian tourists were attacked as they travelled through Wadi Dawan, a desert valley about 300km (180 miles) east of the capital Sanaa.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>Survivor Karina Lambert said the convoy was ambushed by four gunmen hiding behind a truck parked at the side of the road.</font></p><p><br /><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>"They immediately started firing on three of the jeeps, the fourth one was further back so it was not hit," she said in a telephone interview with Belgian TV.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>"They wanted to kill, that’s sure because after the first bursts of machine-gun fire, they approached the vehicles and fired into the cars."</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>There are reports of a fourth fatality, with Reuters news agency citing the victim as a Yemeni national.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht identified one of the victims as Claudine Van Caille, 65, from Bruges. The family of the other female victim has not yet been informed.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>Mr de Gucht said he was horrified by the attack and that he had sent a "clear message" to the Yemeni government to hunt down the killers.</font></p><p><strong><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>Al-Qaeda attacks</font></strong></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>Tourists are often drawn to Wadi Dawan area to visit the famous multi-storey mud buildings in the nearby town of Shibam.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>Al-Qaeda has been blamed for a series of attacks in Yemen, the ancestral home of the group’s leader Osama Bin Laden.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>In July 2006 seven Spanish tourists and their two local drivers died when a suicide bomber rammed his car packed with explosives into their vehicles.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>That was the most deadly attack on Westerners in the country since 17 US soldiers aboard the USS Cole were killed when the ship was attacked by al-Qaeda militants as it rested in port in Aden.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″>In recent years Yemen’s government has been fighting Islamists with the help of US special forces based in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa.</font></p><p><font face=”verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif” size=”2″><a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7196186.stm" target=”_blank”>Source </a></font></p>