Seven killed in attack on Yemen mosque: official

A man takes a photo of smoke rising from the site of an attack on the Political Security Agency building, the headquarters of the Yemeni intelligence services in the southern provinces, in the southern Yemeni city of Aden August 18, 2012.

ADEN (Reuters) - A gunman opened fire on a mosque during Eid prayers in southern Yemen on Sunday, killing seven people and wounding 11, a security official at Defence Ministry said.

In a separate attack on Sunday, a suicide bomber with suspected links to Al Qaeda blew himself up in the southern Abyan province, killing three and wounding two, an official from the province told Reuters.

The shooting at the mosque in the southern province of Dalea came during the prayers that mark the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Security forces followed the gunman home and surrounded the building, the official said.

He added that the man appeared not to be related to Islamist militants who have been staging attacks for the past months.

No further details were immediately available.

The suicide bombing took place in the town of Mudiya in Abyan, the provincial official said.

"One of the dead was a local pro-army militia commander, Nasser Ali Mansur," he said.

The United States has been pouring aid into Yemen to stem the threat of attacks from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and to try to prevent any spillover of violence into neighboring Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter.

Last year, a U.S.-backed offensive drove al Qaeda offshoot Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law) from cities it had seized in an uprising against former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

(Reporting by Mohammed Mukhashaf; Editing by Amena Bakr and Alessandra Rizzo)