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Al-Qaida militants assassinate two Yemeni counter-terrorism officers

25 October 2012 19:51 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Al-Qaida gunmen shot dead two Yemeni counter-terrorism officers south of the capital of Sanaa on Thursday, a police official said, for which the terrorist network claimed responsibility, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

The intelligence officers, Ali al-Yemeni and Abdullah al-Saidy, were gunned down by "two al-Qaida gunmen on a motorcycle" in Dhamar province, some 100 km south of Sanaa early on Thursday, the official told Xinhua by phone.

The assailants escaped the scene, he said on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula ( AQAP) claimed responsibility for assassinating the two intelligence officers. "We successfully assassinated Colonel Ali al-Yemeni of the Yemeni Political Security Agency and Major Abdullah al-Saidy of the National Security Agency," the AQAP said in a brief statement obtained by Xinhua.

In February, the AQAP claimed responsibility for assassinating Major Saleh al-Jabri, the prison warden of the Sanaa-based Political Security Agency, while he was on vacation in Dhamar province.

Earlier this month, al-Qaida militants assassinated an Iraqi counterterrorism adviser to the Yemeni Defense Ministry and a security coordinator between the Yemeni government and the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, according to the Yemeni Interior Ministry’s final investigation reports.

In a separate incident, the state Saba news agency reported that Mayor of Sanaa, Abdulkader Ali Hilal, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by a gunman on a motorbike on Wednesday.

"Hilal survived unharmed from an assassination attempt when he was inspecting the streets of the old city in preparations for the Muslim festivities of Eid," Saba quoted an unnamed security official as saying.

Hilal’s bodyguards chased and captured the gunman, alongside the driver of the motorbike, and handed them to the police for investigation, the agency said.

Yemen has undergone a political transition led by President Abd- Rabbu Mansour Hadi after the stepping down of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh earlier this year under a peaceful transfer of power backed by the United Nations.

Restoring security has become Hadi’s top priorities after last year’s unrest allowed the insurgent al-Qaida militants to control swaths of remote land and expand activities to major cities.