Tribal relatives of an arrested arms dealer opened fire on a police convoy transporting him to court in the Yemeni capital on Tuesday, wounding a policeman, witnesses said.
The gunmen fired at the convoy carrying Sheikh Fares Manaa, arrested in late January for allegedly trafficking arms to Shiite rebels in northern Yemen, the sources said. The gunmen were identified as members of Manaa's tribe.
A policeman was wounded but the convoy managed to make its way to the court, an AFP correspondent reported.
The court decided to keep Manaa in custody for 25 more days to "complete the investigations," a judicial source told AFP.
The government had put the name of Manaa at the top of a blacklist of arms dealers published on the front page of the official Ath-Thawra newspaper last October.
Manaa, who is a brother of the governor of Saada province in the north, formerly headed a committee mediating in last year's war between the government and Saada-based Zaidi Shiite rebels, also known as Huthis.
Local sources said upon Manaa's arrest that the rebels had stolen weapons from arms depots which he owned. He had not reported the theft until two days later, allowing the rebels to make off with around 20 truckloads of arms.
The sources said the incident angered Sanaa, which had been pressing an all-out assault on the Huthis since August.
Gun ownership has long been a key part of Yemeni culture. The country has an estimated 60 million firearms in private hands, roughly three for every man, woman and child.
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