At least one Yemeni guard has been killed and several other people injured, including about 15 schoolchildren, in two separate attacks in Yemen, according to officials.

The guard died in an explosion at a girls' school near the US embassy in the capital Sanaa on Tuesday.

Four other police officers were reportedly wounded in that blast.

Five Yemeni soldiers were wounded in the other explosion at a government compound in the southern province of Abyan, a local government source told the Reuters news agency.

The US embassy declined to comment on the Sanaa blast, pending further investigation into the incident.

But a police official told the AFP news agency "it is a purely criminal incident," suggesting that the attack was not linked to the embassy.

An interior ministry official said that the blast came after a mortar was fired at a high school in the Sawan district.

Troops were deployed to the area, sealing off roads and preventing journalists from reaching to the site of the blast.

In 2007, Yemen banned people from bringing weapons into its major cities in an attempt to stem crime and violence in a country with one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world.

PHOTO CAPTION

Map of Yemen

Al-Jazeera