SANAA, March 18: A Yemeni oil rig worker shot dead his American supervisor, a Canadian and a Yemeni before killing himself at an isolated oilfield on Tuesday, the US oil company he worked for and local authorities said.

The assailant, named by the interior ministry as Naji Ahmed Abdullah al Kumaim, turned his pistol on himself after having killed his three victims in the Safer region, some 300 kilometres east of the Yemeni capital.

The oil firm said the shooting occurred at a rig drilling for the company but owned by a fellow US firm.

“One of the fatalities was a Hunt (firm’s name) employee supervising the rig operations,” Hunt Oil said in a statement.

“The perpetrator was a Yemeni citizen employed by Nabors (another firm) at the rig. He shot the Hunt Oil superintendent. He then shot two Nabors employees, both Canadians. One died on the scene and one, in critical condition, was flown to a hospital in Sanaa,” it said.

“As the shooter fled he was pursued by another Yemeni citizen, also a Nabors employee, who was killed before taking his own life.”

Hunt Oil said it had suspended drilling operations.

A Yemeni interior ministry official said Kumaim was a seven-year employee with Nabors known to suffer from periodic bouts of depression and having no political leanings.

The killing could have been driven by “personal motives, the criminal having repeated during the shooting that he wanted to avenge those who had written reports against him”, the official said.

Security services were continuing the investigation to determine further the circumstances of “this regrettable attack”, he added.

The shooting occurred in Safer, situated in Marib province, where Yemeni and US forces have been cooperating in a search for suspects in the bombing of the USS Cole warship in Oct 2000 that left 17 sailors dead.

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have taken to the streets of Sanaa and provincial cities over recent weeks to demonstrate against a US-led attack on Iraq.—AFP