Islamist militants attacked the US embassy in the Yemeni capital Sanaa with a car bomb and rockets yesterday, leaving 16 people dead, in the second strike on the high-security compound in six months.
The toll included six Yemeni soldiers, six attackers and four civilians, including an Indian, the interior ministry said.
Witnesses said gunmen raked a Yemeni police detachment outside the heavily fortified embassy compound before a suicide bomber blew up a car right by the entrance, setting off what one described as a fireball.
A series of explosions followed as the compound came under rocket as well as small arms fire.
A group calling itself Islamic Jihad in Yemen said in a statement that it carried out the attack, and threatened similar strikes against the British, Saudi and United Arab Emirates missions in Sanaa.
Briton Trev Mason told CNN from Sanaa that he heard at least three big explosions around the embassy from his nearby residential compound.
“We heard the sounds of a heavy gunbattle going on. I looked out of my window and we saw the first explosion going off, a massive fireball very close to the US embassy,” he said.
“The gunbattle went on for a further 10 to 15 minutes followed by two further loud explosions,” he said.
After a rocket attack against a residential compound used by US oilmen in April, the US State Department ordered the evacuation of non-essential diplomatic staff, but the order was lifted last month.
“We are very aware that there is a continuing threat here and that we are continuously reevaluating our security status and making sure we are doing the things we need to do make this embassy safe and ... the interests of our American citizens,” US embassy spokesman Ryan Gliha told CNN.
In March, a schoolgirl and a policeman were killed and 19 people wounded in a hail of mortar fire that US diplomats said targeted the embassy.
“Embassy employees are not authorized to travel outside of Sanaa and have been advised to avoid hotels, restaurants, and tourist areas and to strictly limit their exposure in public places until further notice,” an embassy statement posted in April said.
It called on Americans in Yemen to “exercise caution and take prudent security measures, including maintaining a high level of vigilance, avoiding crowds and demonstrations and varying times and routes for all travel.”
In recent years, militants have carried out a string of attacks in Yemen, the ancestral homeland of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and one of the poorest countries in the world.
In October 2000, al-Qaeda attacked the USS Cole off the southern port of Aden, using a small boat packed with explosives to blow a hole in the side of the vessel, killing 17 US sailors.
Al-Qaeda’s local wing, which calls itself Jund al-Yemen Brigades, has also claimed responsibility for deadly attacks on Belgian and Spanish tourists in Yemen in the past two years.
A group calling itself Jihad — which is not connected to al-Qaeda — has carried out a series of attacks against the security forces and oil installations in the south of Yemen since 2003.
One of its leaders, Khaled Abdel Nabi, was captured after an exchange of fire with police in the town of Jaar late last month. He had been on the run for five years.
Yemen is awash with weapons, with roughly three firearms for every citizen, and has become a major focus of the US “war against terror”.
Last month, Yemeni security forces announced the arrest of 30 suspected al-Qaeda members, saying they had dismantled an extremist cell as part of a crackdown on the jihadist network in the eastern part of the country.
On Aug. 12, the Ministry of Defense announced the death of a local chief and four other al-Qaeda members after armed clashes that left two policemen dead.
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