SANAA: Security forces killed two suspected Al-Qaeda militants in clashes outside the Yemeni capital on Monday, officials said, as the US and British embassies extended their closure for a second day because of threats of attack by the terror group’s offshoot here.
The clashes took place in a region northeast of the capital where last month the government carried out intensified raids against an Al-Qaeda cell it said was plotting attacks against foreign interests, possibly including embassies. In that Dec. 17 raid, officials said four would-be suicide bombers were killed.
The US and British embassies closed Sunday after what US officials said were signs of Al-Qaeda planning an attack in Sanaa, possibly against the diplomatic missions.
An officer on duty at the US Embassy said Monday that the closure remained in force. A State Department spokesman, Fred Lash, said reopening would be assessed day to day, based on the perceived threat to US personnel. The Foreign Office in London said the British were also reviewing the situation.
The French Embassy has been closed to the public since Sunday, though the staff was working, the Foreign Ministry in Paris said. The ambassador urged French nationals in Yemen to avoid all nonessential movement in the country and to exercise vigilance. Spain’s Embassy in Sanaa restricted access to the public.
In Monday’s clashes, security forces attacked a group of Al-Qaeda militants including Nazeeh Al-Hanaq, a senior figure on Yemen’s most wanted list, as they moved through the mountainous area of Arhab.
Al-Hanaq escaped, but two fighters with him were killed in the battle, officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The officials said Monday’s raid was not connected to the threats that prompted the embassy closures.
Yemen has carried out a string of raids on Al-Qaeda hideouts in the past month, part of an intensified effort — backed by the United States — to stamp out the terror group’s growing presence in this impoverished, fragmented nation at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.
In a sign of the sensitivities, Yemen’s foreign minister, Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi, insisted the US-Yemeni coordination does not allow Washington to carry out strikes on targets in Yemen with cruise missiles.
“There are no such agreements, and there are no proposals to do so,” he cited, cited in the Yemeni press Monday.
Yemen has pledged to clamp down on militancy, but government control is weak outside the capital and the country has a history of freeing some alleged militants and tolerating others.
Gen. David Petraeus, the US general who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, made a surprise visit to Yemen over the weekend, a day after announcing that Washington this year will more than double the $67 million in counterterrorism aid that it provided Yemen in 2009.
The US and Britain are funding a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen, and Britain plans to host an international conference Jan. 28 to come up with a strategy to counter radicalization in Yemen.
