Yemen arrests 30 after U.S. embassy attack

SANAA (Reuters) - Yemeni authorities have arrested 30 people suspected of belonging to al Qaeda following an attack on the heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Sanaa, a security source said on Thursday.

Two suicide car bombs set off a series of explosions outside the embassy compound on Wednesday, killing 17 people including six attackers.

The U.S. State Department said Susan el-Baneh, an 18-year-old American woman, and her Yemeni husband were killed while standing in line with family members applying to visit the United States.

Apart from an Indian woman who was walking past, the other dead were all Yemeni, including a bystander who died on Thursday raising the toll to 17.

A group calling itself Islamic Jihad in Yemen, which is unrelated to the Palestinian group with a similar name, claimed responsibility.

The group said on Thursday it belonged to al Qaeda and vowed attacks on the British and Saudi embassies and on Yemeni officials unless Yemen freed several jailed members.

"We in the Islamic Jihad in Yemen, belonging to the al Qaeda organization, repeat our demand to (Yemeni President) Ali Abdullah Saleh to quickly free our brothers within 48 hours," a statement said.

A Yemeni security source said Washington would send investigators to Yemen to help the authorities with their investigation.

The attackers were disguised in military uniforms and had made their cars look like those driven by Yemen's security forces, security sources said.

Gunmen in a car opened fire on embassy guards after they refused to open the metal outer gates of the compound. They had planned to use their disguises to get inside to the main embassy building, some distance from the gate.

The State Department said on Wednesday the bombings bore "all the hallmarks" of an al Qaeda attack, but the United States had not yet concluded who was to blame.

Yemeni security sources said special counter-terrorism forces had been put in charge of defending the U.S. embassy.

Police set up checkpoints, particularly near embassies and residences of Western diplomats and business people.

A U.S. embassy spokesman said the mission would stay open, following an Al Jazeera television report that it had closed after the attack.

(Reporting by Mohammed Sudam in Sanaa, Raissa Kasolowsky and Lin Noueihad in Dubai; editing by Robert Hart)