Shooting outside U.S. embassy in Yemen, 3 held

SANAA (Reuters) - Shooting broke out at a checkpoint outside the U.S. embassy in Yemen on Monday and security officials detained three people for questioning.

No one was hurt but Yemeni officials gave different accounts of the incident.

One official said it appeared to have been security forces firing in the air to warn an approaching car.

"Three people who were in the car are being questioned," a security official told Reuters. "It does not seem that they had shot at the checkpoint."

But another security official said gunmen in the car had opened fire at the checkpoint, hours after the mission said it received a threat.

Twin suicide car bombings killed 16 people outside the heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Sanaa in September, in an attack later claimed by al Qaeda.

In Washington, State Department officials said they were looking into the incident.

The embassy had earlier urged Americans to be cautious in the Arab country that has been the scene of al Qaeda attacks on Western interest.

An embassy employee told Reuters by telephone earlier on Monday that the mission remained open.

"The U.S. Embassy has received a threat against the embassy compound regarding a possible attack which could take place in the foreseeable future," it said on its website.

"U.S. citizens in Yemen are advised to exercise caution and take prudent security measures in all areas frequented by Westerners, including maintaining a high level of vigilance, avoiding crowds and demonstrations, keeping a low profile..." it said in a warden's report.

GUANTANAMO DETAINEES

The statement came days after al Qaeda's wing in Yemen issued a video on the Internet, carrying a call by its leader for attacks on Western targets, and saying two Saudis released from the U.S. military prison camp in Guantanamo Bay had joined the group as commanders.

"We have to cut off the supplies of the Zionist-crusader (Israeli-Western) campaign and kill any of the crusaders we find on our land," Abu Basir al-Wahayshi, leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, said on the video.

After the video was issued, a Saudi Interior Ministry official said nine militants who had undergone "rehabilitation" before being released, including some Guantanamo returnees, had been re-arrested, the state news agency SPA reported. The official did not give the exact dates of the arrests.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Saturday he expected the repatriation soon of 94 Yemenis held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, adding that they would be living with their families at a center to undergo "rehabilitation ... to rid them of extremism" before being released.

Yemen, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's ancestral home, joined the U.S.-led "war on terrorism" after the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities in 2001.

Yemen has jailed scores of militants in connection with the bombings of Western targets and clashes with authorities, but is still viewed in the West as a haven for Islamist militants.

(Reporting by Mohammed Sudam; writing by Firouz Sedarat; Editing by Jon Boyle)