AFP, SANAA - At least eight pople were killed and 45 wounded in Yemen on Friday when a blast went off at the entrance of a mosque in the Saada region, site of a Shiite rebellion, police and witnesses said.

The blast came as hundreds of Muslim faithful were leaving the Bin Salman mosque after Friday prayers, the witnesses said. A local police official told AFP that the initial toll stood at eight dead and 45 wounded.

Witnesses earlier spoke of dozens of casualties as ambulances rushed to the scene of the attack. Some said the target may have been the mosque's imam, or prayer leader, an army officer who adheres to the rigorous Salafi school of Sunni Islam. Witnesses said he was not hurt.

Military personnel are among the faithful who usually pray at the Bin Salman mosque, which like others in Yemen caters for both the majority Sunni community and Zaidis, a Shiite offshoot. The mountainous northwestern province of Saada has been the site of a rebellion by members of the Zaidi community that has killed thousands of people since 2004.

On Tuesday night, seven soldiers were killed and 20 wounded when a convoy of three troop transports was ambushed by rebels in Saada, a mountainous province which has been shaken by the on-off Zaidi insurgency.

The insurgents are known as Huthis after their late commander, Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi, who was killed by the army in September 2004. The renewed violence comes despite recent efforts to implement a peace deal between the government and the rebels brokered by Qatar in June 2007.

The agreement, under which the rebels would lay down their arms, was revived during a meeting between the two sides in Doha in February. The rebels have been fighting to restore the Zaidi imamate, which was overthrown in a 1962 republican coup in Yemen, one of the world's poorest countries.

The rebels reject President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime as illegitimate, although Saleh himself is a Zaidi. The Zaidis are a minority in mainly Sunni Yemen but form the majority in the northwest.

Yemen, an Arabian peninsula country with a tribal structure, has been repeatedly hit by violence in recent weeks. Two attacks in the capital Sanaa in March and April targeted US interests and were claimed by the local wing of the Al-Qaeda network.

On Wednesday, two car bombs exploded inside the compound of customs headquarters in Sanna, but there were no casualties.