Security forces clash with suspected al Qaeda militants

Latest update : 2009-12-30

Yemen's security forces clashed with suspected members of al Qaeda on Wednesday, wounding several and arresting one. Earlier this month, Yemeni forces launched raids on suspected al Qaeda centres, killing more than 60 militants.

AFP - Yemen security forces clashed with Al-Qaeda suspects on Wednesday, wounding several and arresting one, as the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden called for Western help to rout the Islamist militants.

An official told AFP the fighting erupted in the western province of Al-Hudaydah region, during an operation to arrest Al-Qaeda suspects in the Deir Jaber region north of the city of Bajil.

"Clashes broke out and several members of the group were wounded," the official said.

One suspect was arrested "after he was wounded," the official said, adding that while the fighting had subsided the operation was still underway.

Yemen is Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland and has seen a spate of attacks against Western targets over the past decade.

On December 17 and 24, Yemeni forces launched raids on suspected Al-Qaeda targets in the centre of the country and the Sanaa region, killing more than 60 Islamist militants.

On Monday, a defence ministry official said the impoverished Arabian peninsula country "will never be a refuge" for Islamist militants and pledged more attacks on their hideouts like those of December.

"Our mountains will never be a new Tora Bora for them," he said, referring to the Afghan hideout where US-backed Afghan opposition forces came close to capturing or killing bin Laden in December 2001.

"We will hunt them down until we have rooted out their terrorism and cleansed Yemeni soil of their satanic crimes," the official said.

Wednesday's clashes came a day after Yemen acknowledged that a Nigerian citizen accused by the United States of attempting to blow up an American airliner had been in Yemen just weeks before the foiled bombing.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallah, who allegedly tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines as it was landing in Detroit from Amsterdam, is suspected of receiving training for his mission from an Al-Qaeda bomb maker in Yemen.

Yemen has acknowledged Abdulmutallab was in the country until just a few weeks ago after enrolling on an Arabic language course.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Abu Nakr al-Kurbi has called for more Western help against what he said were "hundreds" of Al-Qaeda militants in the country.

"We need more training; we have to expand our counter-terrorism units and this means providing them with the necessary training, military equipment, ways of transportation," Kurbi told the BBC late on Tuesday.

"There is support, but I must say it is inadequate," he said.

He stressed that the Al-Qaeda presence in Yemen posed a threat and warned the jihadists could plot attacks similar to the attempted bombing of a US-bound airliner on Christmas Day claimed by their Yemeni arm.

"Of course there are a number of Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen and some of their leaders ... I can't give you really an exact figure. Maybe hundreds of them, 200, 300," he said.

"They may actually plan for attacks like the one we have just had in Detroit."

Kurbi's comments came as CNN television reported US special forces were working with their Yemeni counterparts to identify Al-Qaeda targets in the impoverished Arabian peninsula republic for possible military action.

"US special operations forces and intelligence agencies, and their Yemeni counterparts, are working to identify potential Al-Qaeda targets in Yemen," CNN quoted a US source as saying.

And The New York Times, citing an unnamed former CIA official, reported Sunday that a year ago the Central Intelligence Agency sent many field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the Yemen.

In the most spectacular attack by the jihadists in Yemen so far, Al-Qaeda suicide bombers killed 17 US sailors on the destroyer USS Cole in the southern port of Aden in October 2000.