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Aden – Militants stormed the defence ministry in the heart of Yemen’s capital on Thursday, killing 52 people, including at least seven foreigners, in a suicide car bombing and assault by gunmen. The brazen attack claimed by al-Qaeda’s local branch in Yemen follows a rise in US drone strikes in this key American ally in the Middle East.
The two-stage operation came as the defence minister was in Washington for talks. The US military increased its regional alert status after the attack and is “fully prepared to support our Yemeni partners,” a senior US defence official said.
At least 167 people were wounded, nine seriously, in the bombing and fierce fire-fight, which underscored the ability of insurgents to take advantage of Yemen’s instability and tenuous security even at the headquarters of its military.
Among the dead at the defence ministry complex, which also houses a military hospital, were soldiers and civilians, including seven foreigners, two aid workers from Germany, two doctors from Vietnam, two nurses from the Philippines and a nurse from India, according to Yemen’s supreme security commission, which issued the casualty figures.
Among the Yemeni civilians killed were a doctor and a senior judge, it said. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s media arm, al-Mallahem, claimed the attack early yesterday morning on its Twitter account, saying it targeted the defence ministry building because it “accommodates drone control rooms and American experts”.
It said security headquarters used by the Americans in their war are “legitimate targets”. It was the deadliest attack in Sanaa since May 2012.
The US considers the Yemeni al-Qaeda branch to be the most active in the world. In recent months, Washington has sharply escalated drone attacks against the militants in the impoverished nation. US forces also have been training and arming Yemeni special forces, and exchanging intelligence with the central government.
The terrorist network gained a major foothold in the south, taking over several towns in the chaos that followed the 2011 uprising that ousted long-time President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The drone strikes and a series of US-backed military offensives helped uproot several key militant strongholds, but al-Qaeda continues to fight back.
Al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch is linked to the foiled plot on Christmas 2009 in which a passenger on a Detroit-bound plane allegedly tried to detonate explosives in his underwear, as well as explosives-laden parcels intercepted on cargo flights a year later.
Defence minister Mohammed Nasser Ahmed was in Washington for consultations with US officials, part of a “strategic dialogue” to aid Yemen’s political transition and security co-operation.
Thursday’s attacks “will not deter the security forces, the armed forces and the honourable sons of the nation from carrying out their religious and patriotic duty in the face of terrorists wherever they may be,” said the statement by the supreme security commission. It is led by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who succeeded Saleh, and includes the country’s top military and intelligence officials.
The senior US defence official said the US military “has increased its regional alert status following the terrorist attack on the Yemeni Republic ministry of defence”.
“The United States military is fully prepared to support our Yemeni partners in the wake of this incident,” added the official, who was not authorised to speak publicly about the matter and requested anonymity.
The US State Department condemned the attack.-AP
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