A suspected al Qaeda car bomb hit a convoy carrying Spanish tourists in Yemen's eastern province of Marib on Monday, security and provincial authority sources said. [Reuters]

Police in the province of Mareb said six of the dead were tourists, believed to be mostly from Spain. The other two were Yemenis, police said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Witnesses said a car drive through a gate then exploded at the site of temple, which was built about 3,000 years ago at the time of the ancient Queen of Sheba.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but police in Mareb said they had received information last month about a possible al-Qaida attack.

Al-Qaida has an active presence in Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, despite government efforts to fight the terror network. Al-Qaida was blamed for the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Aden that killed 17 American sailors and the attack on a French oil tanker that killed one person two years later.