SANAA, June 23 (Reuters) - Sixteen Yemeni Jews including relatives of a man murdered last year have left for Israel, a member of the Arabian peninsula state's Jewish community said on Tuesday.

The three Jewish families left on Sunday, the same day a Yemeni appeals court handed a death sentence to Abdul-Aziz al-Abdi for shooting dead Mashaa Yaeesh al-Nahari in December.

Nahari family members were among those who left, the source said. The 16 come from Amran in the north but were living in the capital Sanaa because of deteriorating security amid a rebellion in neighbouring Saada province by a Shi'ite tribal group.

"The American Jewish agency took charge of the operation to move the Jews after they previously helped a family of 11 to leave," said the source who declined to be named.

There are an estimated 200 to 300 Jews in Yemen, mainly in Sanaa, remnants of a centuries-old community that spoke Hebrew. About 50,000 moved to Israel in an airlift begun in 1949.

Israel defines itself as a Jewish state and offers citizenship to Jews from anywhere in the world. Israel refuses to take back any Palestinian refugees forced from their homes during the fighting that saw Israel come into existence in 1948.

Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country, is struggling with a Shi'ite revolt in the north, a secessionist movement in the south and growing militancy among Sunni al Qaeda sympathisers. (Reporting by Mohammed al-Ghobari; writing by Andrew Hammond, edited by Richard Meares)

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