San’A, April 27: The British Ambassador to Yemen escaped assassination yesterday when a suicide bomber attacked his convoy as it travelled through the capital, Sanaa.
Tim Torlot, a 52-year-old career diplomat, who has served in the Arab state since July 2007, was being driven in his armour-plated vehicle close to the British Embassy when a man thought to be an al-Qaeda militant threw himself at the convoy and detonated his explosives. The ambassador was not hurt.
The attack will heighten concerns about security in Yemen, where al-Qaeda has been gaining strength over the past year. “The failed terrorist attack that targeted the British Ambassador in Sanaa carries the fingerprints of al-Qaeda,” said the Yemeni Interior Ministry. It identified the would-be assassin as 22-year-old Othman Ali al-Salwi, adding that his head was found 50 yards from the blast site.
The British Embassy was closed in January after Yemeni intelligence sources said that an al-Qaeda cell was planning to target it and the US embassy. The Yemeni Army later attacked the cell and killed several of its members. Two of Mr Torlot’s Yemeni police escorts and a local bystander were injured in the blast yesterday. Witnesses said the bomber was disguised in a school uniform.
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Yemen sits at a key nexus for al-Qaeda, many of whose most hardcore fighters have been recruited in the rugged, dirt-poor country that is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden
Mr Torlot was reportedly about 600 yards from the embassy in the new part of Sanaa, close to the heavily fortified US mission, when the attack came. He usually travels in an armoured car followed by an escort vehicle of armed Yemeni police. The embassy itself is protected by razor wire and sandbagged machinegun posts manned by Yemeni forces. Witnesses said the police vehicle had been damaged in the explosion.
The Foreign Office said: “The embassy will remain closed to the public for the time being. We advise all British nationals in Yemen to keep a low profile and remain vigilant.”
The embassy stands on top of a hill with only one approach route. The ambassador always travels under heavy guard and lives in a well-protected residence set back from the main road in another part of the city.
A similar attack in March 2009 targeted a convoy carrying South Korean officials investigating a bombing that killed four Korean tourists.
There are increasing fears that Yemen is becoming a haven for insurgents, with a new generation of terrorists forming a group called al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The organisation has launched attacks both inside Yemen and abroad, including a failed suicide attack on a Saudi prince in charge of fighting terrorism.
The group came to prominence last December when a 23-year-old Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a US airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day admitted that he had been trained in Yemen. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab said that he had been given an explosive device, which was sewn into his underpants, after going into hiding last year while at an Arabic-language school in Sanaa and attending an al-Qaeda training camp.
The Yemeni Government has launched an offensive against al-Qaeda, but senior clerics have threatened to declare a jihad, or holy war, if foreign troops are deployed inside the country.
Before being dispatched to Yemen, Mr Torlot served as deputy head of mission in Baghdad, as well as dealing with counter-terrorism policy for the Foreign Office. Trained in Arabic, his first posting was in nearby Oman in 1984.
—Agencies