SANAA, 6 March 2004 — Yemen has handed over to Egypt six militants wanted there for suspected links to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization, a senior government official said yesterday.

The official told Arab News the extradition was made in the past few days “in response to a request by the Egyptian authorities under a joint security cooperation agreement.”

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would not give names of the suspects or the exact date of the extradition.

He also refused to confirm reports yesterday that the six included Sayed Imam Al-Sharif, the founder of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad militant group, who was reportedly captured in a raid by security forces on militant hide-outs in southern Yemen on Wednesday.

According to Reuters which cited London-based Islamist Yasser Al-Sirry, Al-Sharif was extradited along with five other fellow militants last month.

It quotes Al-Sirry as saying that the six Egyptians were held in Yemen for more than two years before Sanaa handed them to Cairo in return for Yemeni opposition figures.

“The extraditions were made last month as part of a security settlement between the two countries,” Al-Sirry told Reuters by telephone from London, where he runs the Islamic Observation Center rights watchdog.

He said he obtained his information from other militants and relatives of those extradited in Yemen and Egypt.

Egyptian diplomats in Sanaa contacted by Arab News gave contradicting accounts, saying Yemen had not extradited any Egyptian nationals recently.

Al-Sharif had reportedly moved to Yemen in 1996 after turning leadership of the group over to Ayman Al-Zawahiri, now Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader.

Yemeni officials said on Thursday that Al-Sharif had been arrested along with a leading Yemeni Al-Qaeda member named Abdul-Raouf Nassib in the southern province of Abyan.

The arrests took place as part of an ongoing crackdown on mountainous hide-outs of militants in Abyan, where security and military forces are carrying out an extensive manhunt.

Meanwhile, security forces focused on intelligence and mediators rather than force yesterday in their continued hunt for extremists across rugged mountain terrain in the remote area, local officials said.

They were set to delay indefinitely a 48-hour ultimatum facing the fugitives hiding in the mountains of southern Abyan province, which was due to expire yesterday.

“Dozens of wanted extremists are dispersed in the mountainous area where they are hiding in small groups, making them difficult to locate and capture” in the Jebel Thira region above the town of Lawder, one official said.

“In addition, the mountainous region where they are hiding is extremely difficult to access and is very large because it extends for tens of kilometers,” he said.

Security forces backed by helicopters and armored vehicles were deployed to Abyan on Wednesday where they surrounded “about a dozen” suspected extremists.

The local authorities have refused to identify the 10 other suspects arrested or give details about the organizations they belong to.

The remaining fugitives are facing an ultimatum “to surrender unconditionally or face a military assault”, according to the main Yemeni opposition party, Al-Islah.

Also yesterday, at least four people were killed and 30 others injured when an armed man hurled a grenade in a mosque in the central Yemeni province of Dhamar, witnesses said.

The attacker threw a grenade at worshipers during the weekly Friday prayers in a mosque in the Utoma district, Dhamar province, roughly 100 kilometers south of the capital Sanaa, witnesses said.

The attacker himself was reportedly among those killed. His motives were not immediately known.

— Additional input from agencies