Sanaa, January 02: Yemeni forces clashed with rebels, killing 11 in the poor Arab country where the United States and Saudi Arabia fear Al Qaeda will exploit instability to prepare attacks, a government source said on Friday.
The 26 September news website, quoting an unnamed government source, said Yemeni forces had destroyed a “terrorist den” in the northern Saada region on Thursday in what was described as a combing operation by security forces and military.
Rebels from the minority Shia Zaidi sect in northern Yemen launched a rebellion against the government in 2004, complaining of social, economic and religious marginalisation.
The conflict drew in neighbouring Saudi Arabia in November when rebels staged a cross-border incursion into the world’s biggest oil exporter. “Eleven terrorists were killed and others were wounded in widespread combing operations and strikes by military and security units on Thursday against gatherings of Houthi terrorists in a number of areas,” a government source told.
The source said several of the rebels were killed by sniper fire, while others died when a bomb exploded prematurely. Rebels said a child was also killed in a Saudi airstrike.
Shebab fighters: Somalia’s hardline Shebab insurgents said on Friday they would send fighters to Yemen to help an Al Qaeda affiliate behind the failed Christmas Day jetliner bombing in its fight against government forces.
Sheikh Mukhtar Robow Abu Mansour, a senior official of the Shebab militia that pledges allegiance to Al Qaeda, announced the plan as he presented hundreds of newly-trained fighters in the north of Mogadishu. “We tell our Muslim brothers in Yemen that we will cross the water between us and reach your place to assist you fight the enemy of Allah,” said Robow, to chants of “Allahu Akbar”.
“Today you see what is happening in Yemen, the enemy of Allah is destroying your Muslim brothers,” he added. “I call upon the young men in Arab lands to join the fight there.” An Al Qaeda affiliate based in Yemen claimed it was behind the botched Christmas Day plot to bring down a US jetliner from Amsterdam to Detroit.
Sanaa acknowledged that the Nigerian citizen accused by the US of attempting to blow up the Northwest Airlines plane had been in the country just weeks before the foiled bombing. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who allegedly tried to blow up the plane, is suspected of receiving training for his mission from an Al Qaeda bomb maker in Yemen.
—Agencies