Posts
June 20, 2012
SANAA (Reuters) - Yemen's
government says it has killed a militant Islamist who directed suicide bombers
for an al Qaeda-linked group that has carried out a string of deadly attacks in
the country.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
has claimed responsibility for several attacks in the impoverished country,
including a bombing at a military parade rehearsal in the capital Sanaa last
month which killed about 100 people.
Yemen is several weeks into a U.S.-backed
military offensive against militants who seized territory in the restive south
last year during an uprising that forced former President Ali Abdullah Saleh to
step down.
President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi,
who took office in February in a power transfer brokered by Saudi Arabia and
blessed by Washington, has sworn to stamp out the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda,
which has plotted attacks abroad.
The state news agency Saba said
late on Tuesday that security forces had killed militant Salah al-Jawhari in
the southern al-Bayda province, but did not elaborate.
However residents of the
province's al-Yafea district gave a different version of events, saying a drone
had fired missiles at al-Jawhari's vehicle - indicating it was a U.S. attack.
The United States has escalated
its use of drones to kill suspected al Qaeda militants in the impoverished
country.
Yemen said on Tuesday it had
foiled a plot to attack foreign diplomatic missions in the capital. Saba quoted
an official from Yemen's top security body as saying that security forces had
arrested a man who was involved in that plot and also the attack on the parade
rehearsal in Sanaa.
Yemeni troops last week regained
control of several towns in the southern province of Abyan, which Islamist
militants had seized last year.
But the assassination of a top
southern military commander in the port city of Aden on Monday showed the
militants are still capable of carrying out attacks and highlighted the tenuous
grip of Yemen's central authorities on the south.
No comments:
Post a Comment