YEMEN:SUICIDE BOMBERS struck at the US embassy in the heart of the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, yesterday, killing 16 people in the country's worst terrorist attack in years.
Heavy security meant the victims were mostly Yemeni troops guarding the perimeter of the embassy compound. Non-essential staff were evacuated this year after a less serious incident. Six of the dead were the attackers. No Americans were killed or hurt.
The attack, involving a double car bombing and machine-gun and rocket fire, bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda. The organisation's growing strength in the Arab world's poorest country is alarming western governments and intelligence agencies at a time when it is seen as being on the defensive elsewhere in the Middle East.
In a statement to the Agence France-Presse news agency, an unknown group called Islamic Jihad in Yemen said it carried out the Sana'a attack, which took place in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan. The group also threatened to attack the British embassy and the missions of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates unless an unspecified number of prisoners were freed from Yemeni jails.
The US and Britain have helped to train Yemeni security forces.
The Saudis, who have all but crushed their own al-Qaeda groups, are especially nervous about a route for arms, men and money across the long desert border with their neighbour, and a possible link with lawless Somalia just across the Red Sea.
It is unclear whether Yemeni jihadis are in direct contact with al-Qaeda "central" on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, but they have identifiable leaders and have recently been producing internet propaganda and focusing on hitting oil infrastructure and foreign interests in the country.
President Ali Abdullah Salih, in power since 1978, has been an ally of the US in its "war on terror" since the bombing attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbour in 2000, in which 17 US sailors died. But his government has been accused of taking a lax approach to extremists, especially after 23 prisoners tunnelled their way out of a Sana'a prison in 2006 amid reports of collusion between officials and militants.
Western diplomats say Mr Salih had quiet "understandings" with al-Qaeda that it would be left alone to recruit fighters for the Iraq war if it did not perpetrate attacks in Yemen. He has also pursued a programme under which jihadis are allowed to go free if they promise to mend their ways.
"This attack is a reminder that we are at war with extremists who will murder innocent people to achieve their ideological objectives," US president George Bush said.
The US was angered when a Yemeni-American, Jaber Elbaneh, convicted in Yemen of planning attacks, was freed as he appealed a 10-year prison sentence.
Mr Elbaneh was taken back into custody but Sana'a rejected US requests he be handed over to the US for trial. American officials were also alarmed when Yemeni courts commuted a death sentence for Jamal al-Badawi, convicted of masterminding the USS Cole attack, instead giving him 15 years in prison.
- (Guardian service)