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Militants attack two Western targets in Yemen

06 October 2010 19:12 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Suspected al Qaeda militants attacked two Western targets in Yemen on Wednesday, firing a rocket at a senior British diplomat’s car and killing a Frenchman at a gas and oil installation, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
The attacks bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, which has threatened to strike against Western targets and the Yemeni government, which declared war on the group’s local arm after it claimed a failed attack on a U.S.-bound airliner in December.
In London, the British Foreign Office said a British Embassy vehicle carrying the deputy chief of the British mission was attacked and that one British embassy staff member in the vehicle suffered a minor injury.
"The vehicle was on its way to the British embassy, with five embassy staff on board," a Foreign Office spokesman said.
"One member of staff suffered minor injuries and is undergoing treatment, all others were unhurt."
A security source in Yemen said three Yemeni bystanders were wounded in the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack. President Ali Abdullah Saleh met the British envoy to discuss the attack.
The Frenchman died in a shooting incident inside the compound of Austrian-owned oil and gas group OMV, France’s Foreign Ministry said. A security source said a Yemeni guard working for a private security firm went on a shooting spree, and government forces subsequently disarmed him.
In London, Foreign Secretary William Hague called it a "shameful attack." He said the attack would only reinforce Britain’s determination to help Yemen confront its challenges.
Both attacks followed tightened security in the capital of the embattled country whose conflicts with a resurgent al Qaeda, secessionists in the south and Shi’ite rebels in the north has raised Western and Gulf Arab fears it is on the verge of becoming a failed state.
WORSENING SECURITY
Those fears worsened after the Yemen-based arm of al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the botched bombing of the U.S.-bound airliner. The group also said it was behind a failed assassination attempt on the deputy interior minister of Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s neighbor and the world’s top oil exporter.
"These twin attacks reinforce the overall picture that the security situation in Yemen has been deteriorating since the start of the year, since the Yemeni government and the U.S. stepped up their fight against al Qaeda," said Nicole Stracke of the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.
"Al Qaeda has been reacting to this. But these attacks are not an escalation - it’s clear they are under huge pressure and it shows in their operations. Shooting an RPG is not a complicated operation," she said.
Stracke also said the militants may have chosen to target the British embassy because it was easier to access than the heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Sanaa.
An al Qaeda suicide bomber attacked the British ambassador’s convoy in April, killing himself and injuring three others. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said it was behind that attack, accusing the British envoy of leading a war on Muslims in the peninsula.
Yemen’s population of unemployed youths are seen as potential recruits for Islamist fighters, and Western donor nations including Britain backed Yemen in its fight against al Qaeda at a United Nations meeting in New York last month.
More than 40 percent of Yemen’s 23 million people live on less than $2 a day, and concerns about instability and corruption have hampered growth and made unemployment worse.
LINKS TO BIN LADEN
Yemen is the ancestral home of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, who is thought to be in hiding somewhere in the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Analysts say Yemenis have long formed a significant body of al Qaeda footsoldiers abroad.
Al Qaeda in Yemen announced last year that Yemen was the base for its Saudi and other Gulf operations. It stepped up attacks this year in apparent reprisal for the government’s increased collaboration with the United States.
Yemen’s Western allies and Saudi Arabia have long feared a resurgent al Qaeda wing could take advantage of rising insecurity and weak central control to use Yemen as a base for attacks that would destabilize the region and beyond.
The failed airliner bombing prompted Washington to step up training, intelligence and military aid to Sanaa. Yemen cooperated with Washington after the September 11 attacks of 2001 to stamp out the group’s presence.
Suspected U.S. drones -- unmanned aircraft also used against militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- have been criticized by rights watchdog Amnesty International as extrajudicial killings.
Al Qaeda and the Yemeni government have clashed for many years, but the group’s operations have typically focused on Western targets.
An al Qaeda attack on the U.S. embassy in Sanaa in 2008 killed 16 people, including six attackers.