Sana'a, Yemen  - A man convicted of killing ten people in a shooting rampage outside a mosque in north-western Yemen last year was executed by a firing squad in his home city Wednesday, a security source said.

A police firing squad shot dead Abdullah Saleh al-Kohali, 27, in the central prison of Amran, some 70 kilometres north of the capital Sana'a, the source said.

He was executed after the verdict sentencing him to death was read out by a judge at the prison's courtyard, the source added.

Sana'a, Yemen  - The Yemeni coastguard thwarted a pirate attack on a South Korean cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden, killing one pirate on Monday, Yemen's Interior Ministry reported.

A coastguard unit in the southern Yemeni port of Aden answered a distress call from the Korean ship that came under attack about 40 miles off Aden, the ministry said in a statement.

Pirates were closing in on the ship pointing rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers in an attempt to force it to stop as a dispatched coastguard gunboat reached the site, the ministry said.

"Coast guards exchanged fire with the Somali pirates and fatally shot one of them," it said, adding that the pirates fled the area and the ship was able to continue its journey.

Sana'a, Yemen - A Yemeni state security court on Monday sentenced a Pakistani man to death and 15 others to 25 years in prison for smuggling drugs into the Arabian Peninsula country.

The court convicted the 16 men of smuggling around 10,000 kilograms of hashish into Yemen through the Arabian Sea.

The men were arrested in September after their boat was seized by Yemeni coast guard patrols about 50 miles off the south-eastern Yemeni port of Mukalla, prosecutors told the court.

Yemen's south-eastern coast is used by drug-traffickers from Iran and Pakistan as a gateway to oil-rich countries in the Gulf.

Sana'a, Yemen - A court in north-western Yemen on Monday convicted a former air force pilot of shooting to death a Jewish man, but said he was "mentally unstable" when he committed the crime.

The court also fined the convict the equivalent of 27,000 dollars in blood money.

Abdul-Aziz al-Abdi, a 40-year-old retired Yemeni Air Force pilot, has confessed to the killing of Moshe al-Nahari, a member of the Jewish minority in the north-eastern town of Raida last December.

The victim's family said it would appeal the verdict as it has been expecting a death sentence to be handed on al-Abdi.

Sana'a, Yemen - Forty-five Africans drowned after a boat carrying them from Somalia across the Gulf of Aden capsized in deep waters off Yemen, the Yemeni Interior Ministry said Saturday.

The boat, carrying 46 would-be migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia, capsized Friday night about 95 kilometres off the south-eastern Yemeni port of Mukalla, the ministry said in a statement.

An Ethiopian passenger and three traffickers were able to get safely to shore, the ministry said. The smugglers were arrested.

Sana'a, Yemen - Yemen's House of Deputies (Parliament) on Thursday approved a two-year postponement of the next parliamentary elections in order to provide time to reform the electoral system.

In an ad hoc session, 200 of the MPs who attended the debate voted for a constitutional amendment to prolong parliament's tenure for two more years, thus postponing elections until April 2011.

A final endorsement for the constitutional change is needed by the parliament within the next two months.