3 injured as gunmen attack polling station in southern Yemen

ADEN, Yemen, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- Unknown gunmen attacked an office of the electoral committee in Yemen's restive southern province of Lahj on Wednesday morning, injuring at least three people, a local police officer told Xinhua.

The unknown attackers, believed to be linked to the separatist Southern Movement, fired two rocket-propelled grenades at dawn on the headquarters of a local electoral committee in downtown Houta city, the provincial capital city of Lahj, injuring at least three people, the police officer said on condition of anonymity.

"The armed attack, which coincided with a complete outage of power supply for several neighborhoods of the city, was followed by heavy machine gun fire," the officer said.

"The shooting lasted for more than half an hour, but no casualties were reported," he added.

The attack came just one day after an explosion at a polling center in the neighboring southern port city of Aden, when an attacker blew himself up with a grenade.

Elsewhere in Yemen, witnesses told Xinhua anonymously that the southern activists gunned down a number of officers of the electoral committee in the southeastern province of Hadramout in an effort to boycott the country's upcoming presidential election.

Earlier this month, pro-separatism leaders in the country's southern regions said they would boycott the presidential election scheduled on Feb. 21 by preventing voters from casting their ballots.

The separatist Southern Movement demands an end to the north- south union deal signed in 1990, complaining that the northerners have seized the south's oil resources and discriminated against the southerners.