Blasts heard at Yemen arms storage facility

ADEN, Sep 6 (Reuters) A series of explosions were heard in the Yemeni port city of Aden in an area where the governemnt stores old arms and ammunition, witnesses said.

In the capital Sanaa, a government source said an explosion hit the storage facility as officers prepared some ammunition for scrapping.

''An explosion took place as scrap was being moved from an arms storage (facility) in Jabal Hadid in the city of Aden,'' the source said. ''A spark might have caused the explosion. The reason is being investigated.'' He said no casualties were reported.

A similar explosion hit the facility in the 1990s without causing any casualties.

Yemen, the ancestral homeland of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, joined the US-led war on terrorism after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

REUTERS SBA RAI2200