Sanaa, June 20: Eleven people including seven military personnel were killed in a suspected Al-Qaeda attack on Yemeni intelligence headquarters in the southern port city of Aden on Saturday, officials said.
The higher security committee, in an official statement, said preliminary investigations “indicate that the criminal attack carries the marks of the Al-Qaeda terror network,” the state news agency Saba reported.
It said three women and a seven-year-old boy were also killed in the clashes between the building guards and the assailants.
Earlier in the day, medical sources said that 10 security personnel and three women cleaners were killed and at least 12 other people wounded.
The statement said “terrorists” stormed the main gate of the building at around 0500 GMT on Saturday, using grenades and gunfire to attack guards.
It made no reference to reports by local officials that the assailants succeeded in freeing an unspecified number of suspected Al-Qaeda members from the security building.
Witnesses said the assailants “were seen leaving the building in a bus, taking people who had been detained there with them,” in what appeared to be a coordinated and well-planned operation.
There were no casualties among the attackers, the witnesses said.
The security committee vowed that the “terrorists” will be chased and brought before justice.
Yemen has witnessed numerous attacks claimed by Al-Qaeda, but Sanaa has intensified operations against the local group franchise.
This week, Al-Qaeda urged Yemen’s eastern tribes to rise against the government and threatened retaliation for alleged air strikes in the area, the US monitoring group SITE said on Friday.
“God willing, we will light up the ground with fire under the tyrants of infidelity in the regime of (Yemeni President) Ali (Abdullah) Saleh and his helpers, the agents of America,” SITE quoted the group as saying.
In late May, provincial official Jaber Ali al-Shabwani and four of his bodyguards were killed in an air strike in Marib province that reportedly targeted a wanted Al-Qaeda suspect.
A local official said Shabwani had been negotiating for the man’s surrender and had gone for talks at the farm targeted in the air strike.
–Agencies