Members of a Yemeni tribe attacked an oil pipeline with rocket-propelled grenades to avenge the death of a provincial official killed by mistake in an anti-al-Qaeda raid, a tribal source said yesterday.
Members of the al-Shabwan tribe attacked the pipeline passing over their land in Marib province, east of the capital Sana’a, “to avenge the death of the secretary general of Marib provincial council, Jaber Ali al-Shabwani,” the source said.
The 450km pipeline connects the Safer oil field in Marib with the port of al-Salif on the Red Sea.
Shabwani and four of his bodyguards were killed in the Yemeni air strike which targeted a wanted al-Qaeda suspect on Monday night, a security source said.
The suspect — Mohammed Said bin Jardan — was wounded but was able to escape, the source said.
According to a local official, Shabwani had been negotiating for the past week for bin Jardan’s surrender and had gone to the farm which was hit in the air strike for talks.
Yemen is the ancestral homeland of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and has been the scene of several attacks claimed by the group on foreign missions, tourist sites and oil installations.
Marib is one of al-Qaeda’s Yemeni strongholds.
The group has suffered setbacks amid US pressure on Sana’a to crack down but its presence threatens to turn Yemen into a base for training and plotting attacks, a top US counterterrorism official said in September.
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