RECENT attacks on Al-Qaeda positions in Yemen, including cruise missile strikes, were led by the United States according to a CBS television report Saturday.
The channel quoted Sebastian Gorka, a ‘US special operations expert who trains Yemeni officers’ as saying the United States had led the recent ground and air assaults.
‘That was very much something executed by the United States, but with heavy support by the Yemeni government,’ Gorka said. ‘It was cruise missile strikes in combination with military units on the ground.’
The report comes after President Barack Obama earlier blamed Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) for arming and training a young Nigerian man who tried to blow up a US airliner on Christmas Day.
The US leader also vowed to hit back at those behind the attack, as his administration faces criticism for failing to prevent the December 25 attack.
Yemeni forces launched raids on suspected Al-Qaeda targets on December 17 and 24, killing more than 60 militants. Several others were also wounded in clashes this week in a western province of the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state which lies north of Somalia across the Gulf of Aden.
On Saturday security sources said Yemeni army reinforcements had been sent to the eastern provinces of Abyan, Bayada and Shawba, where Al-Qaeda militants have hideouts.
The US and British embassies in Yemen closed on Sunday amid threats from a local branch of Al-Qaeda, after Washington and Britain vowed to help the impoverished country in its fight against extremism.
‘The US Embassy in Sanaa is closed today, January 3rd 2010, in response to ongoing threats by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to attack American interests in Yemen,’ said a statement posted on the embassy’s website.
On Thursday the US mission sent a warning message to American citizens in the country reminding them of the ‘continuing threat of terrorist actions and violence against American citizens and interests throughout the world’.
Britain followed suit, with a spokeswoman for the Foreign Office in London confirming that its Sanaa embassy was closed on Sunday ‘for security reasons.’
A decision would be taken later as to whether the mission would reopen on Monday, January 4th she added.
A Yemeni government official said that the British embassy ‘is closed today for security reasons, and out of fear of possible Al-Qaeda reactions’. But he stressed there were ‘no direct Al-Qaeda threats’.
Spain has also decided to close its embassy in Sanaa on Monday and Tuesday, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo said on its website, quoting embassy sources.
AQAP had called on Monday for further attacks on Westerners in the Arabian Peninsula as it claimed the failed Christmas Day attack on a US airliner.
‘We call upon every Muslim who cares about his religion and doctrine to assist in expelling the apostasies from the Arabian Peninsula, by killing every crusader who works at their embassies or other places; declare it an all-out war against every crusader on Mohammad’s peninsula on land, air and sea,’ said an AQAP statement.
Yemen has been under scrutiny since the failed attempt by the Nigerian-born Umar Abdulmutallab to blow up a US airliner on Christmas Day. Abdulmutallab was trained in Yemen.
The United States and Britain have agreed to fund special counter-extremism police there after US President Barack Obama on Saturday for the first time blamed Al-Qaeda in Yemen for the thwarted attack.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown confirmed Sunday that he and Obama had agreed to back a counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen.
‘Downing Street and the White House have agreed to intensify joint US-UK work to tackle the emerging terrorist threat from both Yemen and Somalia in the wake of the failed Detroit terror plot,’ a statement said.
Downing Street said Britain was already helping to train Yemeni counter-terrorism officials, but a spokeswoman said this was the first time the counter-terrorism police units had been confirmed.
She said Britain was forecast to give more than £100m to Yemen in 2011.
Downing Street also said in its statement that the prime minister and president believed that in Somalia ‘a larger peacekeeping force is required and [we] will support this at the UN Security Council’.
Al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab insurgents in Somalia control large swathes of south and central parts of the country and have wrested control of much of the capital Mogadishu, attacking government and African Union peacekeepers.
Last week Brown called for a high-level international meeting later this month to devise ways to counter radicalisation in Yemen. Downing Street said the government of Yemen had been consulted over the decision to boost the country’s coastguard and police operations.
Brown will also ask that the situation be discussed by the European Union and push for tougher action on Yemen from the Financial Action Task Force, an international body tackling money laundering and funding for violent extremist groups.
He is also to hold a meeting of a special committee featuring leading members of his Cabinet to discuss Britain’s response to the alleged plot.
Obama’s top commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, arrived in Yemen on Saturday to tell the president, Ali Abdallah Saleh, that the US would increase its counter-terrorism aid in the coming year.
‘We have made Yemen a priority over the course of the past year and this is the latest in that effort.
‘General Petraeus briefed John Brennan on the visit, and during the course of his consultations with the President, Brennan updated the President on General Petraeus’s productive visit,’ a senior Obama administration official said.
In the 2010 fiscal year, US development and security assistance to Yemen is expected to rise to 63 million dollars from a total of 40.3 million dollars in the 2009 fiscal year, a State Department official said Wednesday.
For its part, Yemen on Sunday welcomed the British and US decision to fund its counter-extremism force. ‘Any assistance provided to Yemen’s counter-terrorism force will be most welcome,’ a government official said.
‘We have said in the past that the counter-terrorism force is still limited in numbers and equipment, while it is based only in the capital’s region, and conducts only few rapid operations in the provinces,’ he said.
The official also said that Sanaa would also need help to modernise its coastguard ‘in light of the danger coming from Somalia’.
There have been a spate of assaults on the US embassy in Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden and the site of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. The embassy has closed several times over past threats.
The most deadly attack in recent history happened in September 2008, when gunmen and two vehicles packed with explosives attacked the embassy building, killing 19 people. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility.
