Yemen official: Suicide attack outside police academy kills at least 10

By Associated Press,

July 11, 2012

SANAA, Yemen — A suicide bomber detonated his explosives into a crowd of Yemeni police cadets as they were leaving their academy on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people, a security official said.

Ambulances could be seen rushing to the site of the attack in the capital Sanaa. The official said dozens more were wounded, including several critically.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, but al-Qaida’s Yemen branch frequently targets security forces.

Twelve suspects have been arrested in connection with Wednesday’s attack, according to security officials. The officials said the bomber was from the province of Amran, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) northwest of Sanaa. They provided no other details

The capital was on high alert after the attack, with security forces setting up checkpoints around the city and searching cars. Security was also beefed up around embassies.

The attack came after the army last month recaptured several militant-held towns in the country’s south, following a monthslong campaign to retake territory the militants seized during last year’s political turmoil that swept the country.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, considered the global terror movement’s most dangerous offshoot, has struck back against the military’s offensive with deadly attacks in the south and a May 21 bombing at a parade ground in Sanaa that killed 96 Yemeni soldiers.

Security officials said 55 people have been arrested in connection with that attack, among them al-Qaida militants accused of plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy.

Last week, Yemeni state TV aired a number of the detainees’ purported confessions, with one of the accused saying he had orders to carry out an attack against the U.S. Embassy and other foreign embassies. He did not elaborate.

Earlier Wednesday, the government announced that two al-Qaida militants who tunneled out of a prison last month were re-arrested in a southern province. An Interior Ministry statement said one of the two, Nasser Ismail Ahmed Muttahar, was detained for taking part in an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa in 2008.

The attack on the embassy’s gate, carried out by gunmen and vehicles packed with explosives, killed 19 people including an 18-year-old American woman and six militants. None of those killed or wounded were U.S. diplomats or embassy employees. It was the deadliest assault on a U.S. embassy in a decade.

The two militants who had escaped prison were captured in al-Dhali province on Tuesday. The ministry statement said they were among five militants who escaped from a prison in the western province of Hodeida on June 26.

In another of Yemen’s multiple ongoing conflicts, the army shot dead a protester Wednesday in the southern port city of Aden and wounded four others, including two women, a security official said.

He said the demonstrators were protesting the government’s decision to deploy army units inside Aden. What started as a peaceful demonstration turned violent as marchers started throwing rocks at the army, which then opened fire to disperse them.

Aden, the capital of a separate country before it unified with the north in 1990, is experiencing a wave of protests calling for the secession of the south.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.nt-held towns in the country’s south. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, considered the global terror movement’s most dangerous offshoot, has struck back against the military’s offensive with deadly attacks in the south and a May 21 bombing at a parade ground in Sanaa that killed 96 Yemeni soldiers.

Also Wednesday, the government announced that two al-Qaida militants who tunneled out of a prison last month were re-arrested in a southern province.

An Interior Ministry statement said the two were captured in al-Dhali province on Tuesday. It said they were among five militants who escaped from a prison in the western province of Hodeida on June 26.

It said one of the two, Nasser Ismail Ahmed Muttahar, was detained for taking part in an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa in 2008.

The attack on the embassy’s gate, carried out by gunmen and vehicles packed with explosives, killed 19 people including an 18-year-old American woman and six militants. None of those killed or wounded were U.S. diplomats or embassy employees.

It was the deadliest assault on a U.S. embassy in a decade.

In another of Yemen’s multiple ongoing conflicts, the army shot dead a protester Wednesday in the southern port city of Aden and wounded four others, including two women, a security official said.

He said the demonstrators were protesting the government’s decision to deploy army units inside Aden. What started as a peaceful demonstration turned violent as marchers started throwing rocks at the army, which then opened fire to disperse them.

Aden, the capital of a separate country before it unified with the north in 1990, is experiencing a wave of protest calling for southern secession.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with regulations.

Yemeni kills five people after watching Turkish soap opera

Wednesday, 11 July 2012

By Abdul Aziz al-Hiajem

Al Arabiya SANA’A

A Yemeni man has been executed after murdering five people, among then one woman, in an effort to imitate a Turkish soap opera.

Mohamed al-Ali al-Azab, 31, admitted before a crowd of tribal chieftains, who gathered to witness his execution, that his crime was inspired by the Turkish TV series ‘Valley of Wolves.’

The incident began with a dispute between Azab and another man in the Dawran district in the western governorate of Dhama and culminated with Azab killing five people, amongst them the other man’s mother in a shootout.

After a lot of resistance, Azab finally ran out of ammunition and had to surrender. He was then sentenced to death in a tribal trial. The sentence, said tribal chiefs, was aimed at stopping the vendetta expected to follow the murder and which would likely take many more lives.

Tribal executions are common in Dhamar were people rarely resort to state courts. In murder cases, the murderer, accompanied by members of his family and tribe, goes to the victim’s family carrying his coffin, a ritual known as “the passageway to salvation.”

It is up to the victim’s family to forgive the murderer and their decision is made public in an open place where members of several tribes are present. If they don’t forgive him, he is sentenced to death.

Turkish soap operas have lately caused a lot of family problems in Yemen, especially romantic ones that featured scenes quite uncommon in the conservative Yemeni society and that have allegedly led to an increase in divorce cases.

Wives in particular are complaining that their husbands as not as romantic as the male characters in the soap operas. This was particularly the case the show titled “Noor.”

Valley of the Wolves, which caused the murder, was also the reason for a family crisis in the Red Sea city of al- Hudaydah when one month ago a 20-year-old wife asked her husband for a divorce for not wearing jeans and not being as elegant as the lead character of the soap opera. It was only the mediation of relatives that stopped the separation.

According to sociologist Khaled Modhesh, the problem with Turkish soap operas is that they reflect a culture that, though Muslim, is to a great extent influenced by the West.

 “These soap operas introduce to conservative Yemenis a set of social values that are alien to their religious beliefs and social norms and this constitutes a grave threat to their identity,” he told Al Arabiya.

For Sheikh Mohamed Salem, a mosque imam, Turkish TV shows can easily spread corruption because of the similarities with Arab cultures.

 “Turkey is in many aspects close to the Arab world and this makes Arabs attracted to its traditions while not realizing that they are heavily affected by the West and therefore destroy the ethics of the youth.”

Salem noted that unlike Yemeni society, Turkish drama is very daring is tackling a lot of sensitive issues.

 “They are too liberal in the topics they discuss and the way they discuss them.”

A Top Reporter In Yemen Explains What's Really Going On In The Country's Secret US Drone War

Michael Kelley | Jul. 10, 2012

One of the top journalists in Yemen recently spoke with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) about the fight against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the covert U.S. drone war.

Hakim Almasmari, a reporter for CNN and the Editor-in-Chief of the English-language Yemen Post, is an American of Yemeni descent who moved to Yemen's capital of Sanaa 10 years ago.

The U.S. now believes that the biggest terrorist threat resides in the impoverished Gulf state – BIJ details how U.S. drone strikes have spiked there this year – and Almasmari gave a first hand account of the conditions on the ground after AQAP and its local allies were driven out of their southern strongholds.

It's a very informative interview, and we've summarized some of Almasmari's most revealing points:

    There will be a sharp increase in suicide attacks and assassination attempts as AQAP changes its strategy from holding towns, which is very costly, to traditional guerrilla tactics.

    AQAP evacuated south Yemen because it struck a deal with Yemen's government. Almasmari cites the fact that 88 suspected AQAP militants have escaped prison in the last four months, including five senior members from a high security prison last week.

    Yemeni officials have confirmed that there are three kinds of U.S. strikes – drone strikes, jets coming from Djibouti and strikes coming from U.S. navy ships – and all of them have been used in different ways.

    The Yemeni air force is weak and conducts strikes with few casualties while U.S. drones strikes are increasing without any coordination with the Yemen Defense Ministry. Yemeni officials told Almasmari that very few ministry officials know details of U.S. strikes.

The Yemeni government will never be transparent about U.S. drones because it would cause a major uprising in Yemen, so official statements lack credibility.

    It is extremely difficult to report on drone strikes because many are now occurring in mountainous regions or areas where very few people live. Furthermore, one needs multiple sources who can confirm that a strike was from a drone before reporting it.

Some quotes from Almasmari paint a particularly devastating picture:

"The U.S. is helping Yemen become more of a dictatorship rather than an institutional nation. By allowing the drone strikes and no one knowing about it, this way people cannot stand against it or approve it."

"The only time when [civilian casualties] are reported is when independent sources confirm the news to me and the government officially acknowledges those civilian casualties. But most of the time they are never reported, only when the government is forced to report it."

Almasmari's insights echo events from the other frontiers of covert U.S. drone operations: U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have released high-level insurgents to make peace, Pakistan says it has not given permission for any U.S. drone strikes in exchange for Washington's apology for the killing of Pakistani troops in November and the BIJ's statistics show how difficult it is to track civilian casualties.

Southern separatist killed, four wounded in Yemen

July 11, 2012

(AFP)

ADEN — A separatist from Yemen's southern movement was killed and four other people were wounded, including two women, in clashes with police in the port city of Aden on Wednesday, a local activist said.

"The police came into the Mansoura district and opened fire after residents came out to protest the police presence," Nizar al-Saeedi told AFP, adding that "one person was killed and four others were wounded."

On Monday, two protesters were killed and a man was left "clinically dead" during clashes in the same district which for months has been controlled by southern separatists who have their own militia.

Police rarely venture into the area without triggering a reaction, at times violent, from local residents who view them as an extension of the central government in Sanaa from which they want to separate.

On June 15, police forcibly reopened the main entrance into the district, blocked off by the local militia since 2011, and dismantled a year-old separatist protest camp, sparking fierce clashes.

At least eight people were wounded, including six soldiers.

Yemen's southern separatists have for decades complained of marginalisation by Sanaa. Though the movement remains fractured, it demands autonomy and in some cases independence.

South Yemen was a separate nation before unification with the north in 1990.