Yemeni officials said that two Belgian women and two Yemeni drivers were killed on Friday when their convoy was attacked by gunmen, possibly al-Qaeda militants in a desert mountain valley, eastern Yemen.

This was the second attack on foreign tourists in Yemen. Last summer, in central Yemen, a group of tourists that was visiting a temple was attacked by a suicide bomber. Eight Spaniards and two Yemenis were killed.

The convoy from Friday was formed out of four vehicles and was traveling in a valley filled of ancient ruins, Wadi Daw'an in Hadramut region, about 180 miles east of Sana, the capital.

The New York Times reports that the gunmen were in a pickup truck parked by a rural road when they’ve ambushed the convoy.  Three other people were injured: two Belgians and one Yemeni.

One tourist who survived the attack, Karina Lambert, said to Belgium RTL-TVI television network: “They wanted to kill, that's sure, because after the first bursts of machine-gun fire, they approached the vehicles and fired into the cars,” San Francisco Chronicle informs.

The bodies of the victims were flown in Sana on Friday night.

Ten suspects were detained and the roads that lead into province were closed, according to a Yemeni official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The area where the attack occurred is just south from Osama Bin Laden’s ancestral home.

It is filled with historical mud dwellings in the town of Shibam and was part of the kingdom Hadramut. It is not seen as a dangerous area, even though there had been kidnappings of foreign tourists by tribes in the region before. In recent years violence subsided.

Recently, statements have appeared over the internet claiming to be threats from al-Qaeda in Yemen.

On Friday the government said that it was possible for the attack to be carried by al-Qaeda, but it wasn’t clear. One government official said that it might have something to do with the unsettlement in the south where there is antigovernment movement carried out by former military officers. Last Sunday two demonstrators were killed when police opened fire in the city of Aden.