Yemen police halt fireworks causing rumors of U.S. embassy attack

SANAA (Reuters) - Yemeni police moved in to halt a firework display at a wedding party near the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa on Monday that triggered rumors of an attack on the mission, a security guard and a Yemeni diplomat in Washington said. They said security guards around the mission in Sanaa fired some shots in the air. "The U.S. Embassy in Sanaa was not attacked, nor was there any bombing in the vicinity of the Embassy," said Mohammed al-Basha, a spokesman for the Yemeni embassy in Washington in a twitter message. He said some people who had set off the fireworks were arrested. A security warning in August forced the United States and other Western countries to close their missions in Yemen. The U.S. Embassy had long been a target of Islamist militants in Yemen, where Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), one of the most active branches of the network founded by Osama bin Laden, is based. (Reporting by Abdul-Rahman al-Ansi, Khaled Abdullah in Sanaa and Mohammed Mokhashaf in Aden, Writing by Sami Aboudi; editing by Ralph Boulton)