Sana'a, Yemen  - At least ten people were injured as police fired in the air to disperse thousands of opposition supporters who gathered for an anti-election rally in the Yemeni capital Sana'a Thursday, witnesses said.

Clashes erupted in several areas of the city as police closed roads leading to the city centre, where the opposition was due to hold a rally to call for a boycott of the legislative elections due for April 2009.

Dozens of protesters were arrested, opposition sources said.

Interior Ministry officials said two policemen were also injured in the clashes.

Sana'a, Yemen  - The former driver of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden arrived in the Yemeni capital Sana'a Wednesday after his release form the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, security sources said.

Salim Hamdan, 40, arrived on a US military plane that landed in a military base near Sana'a International Airport, the sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Hamdan was convicted by a US military commission in August of supporting terrorism and sentenced to five and a half years in prison. He is due for release in January with time served.

He was arrested by the US forces in Afghanistan in 2001, and transferred to the Guantanamo prison in 2002.

Sana'a, Yemen - Yemen will receive Osama bin Laden's former driver Salim Hamdan from the US military prison in Guantanamo on the island of Cuba, the Arab country's Defence Ministry said on Tuesday.

"US authorities will hand over the Yemeni citizen Salim Hamdan to Yemen," the ministry said in a statement posted on its website.

The statement said the extradition would be carried out "within the next few days," without elaborating.

Sana'a, Yemen - Somali pirates have hijacked a Yemeni cargo ship in the Arabian Sea and demanded 2 million dollars as ransom for its release, maritime sources said on Tuesday.

The sources in the south-eastern Yemeni port of Mukalla told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the vessel, Erina, was attacked as it sailed from Mukalla to the Indian Ocean island of Socotra on November 19.

Armed pirates took the ship to the port of Eyl in the semi- autonomous Puntland region in northern Somalia, they said.

Sana'a, Yemen - A Yemeni state security court on Saturday sentenced an Iranian man to death and 11 other Iranians as well as a Pakistani man to 25 years in jail for smuggling drugs into the Gulf state.

The court convicted the 13 men, aged between 24 and 50, of smuggling some 1,400 kilograms of hashish from Iran into Yemeni territorial waters.

The men were arrested in March and their Iranian-flagged boat was seized by Yemeni coast-guard patrols off the south-eastern province of Mahra on the Arabian Sea.

Ayoub Muhammad Houd, 50, was sentenced to death after the court condemned him for leading the group.

Sana'a, Yeme