Hi Farrel and thanks for your feedback!

I've searched more and finally found a note here:
http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/rexml/rdoc/classes/REXML/Elements.html#M002906

"Note that XPaths are automatically filtered for Elements, so that
non-Element children will not be yielded"

So basically that's what you said : Attribute instances (non-Element)
cannot be retrieved directly through each_element.

I either have to seek for elements then grab the attribute like you
did, or stick with XPath.each which does the job pretty well.

thanks!

Thibaut