From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sat Dec 19 2009 - 06:17:56 EST
'US aided' deadly Yemen raids
December 19, 2009
11:41 Mecca time, 08:41 GMT
The US provided firepower and intelligence to help the Yemeni government
launch a series of deadly raids against suspected al-Qaeda bases in the
country, the New York Times has reported.
Barack Obama, the US president approved the military and intelligence
support after receiving a request from the Yemeni government, the newspaper
reported late on Friday, citing officials familiar with the operations.
Yemeni security officials said that at least 34 suspected al-Qaeda fighters
were killed on Thursday in the raids, which targeted sites in the southern
province of Abyan and in the district of Arhab, which lies northeast of the
capital Sanaa.
Mohammed Albasha, a spokesman for the Yemeni embassy in Washington, told the
Associate Press that the US launched missiles during the raids.
'Many more killed'
Those killed and arrested in Arhab "planned to strike at schools as well as
interests at home and abroad," Yemen's interior ministry said on Thursday,
without elaborating.
Residents of Abyan said that there was no al-Qaeda training camp in the area
and that the raids had destroyed several homes.
Abbas al-Assal, a local human rights activist who was at the scene, said 64
people were killed, including 23 children and 17 women.
"The government wants to show the world that it is serious in pursuing
al-Qaeda elements and that the south of Yemen is a refuge for al-Qaeda. That
is not true at all," al-Assal told the Associated Press by telephone.
Ali Mohammed Mansour, gave similar casualty figures, and said that he helped
bury the dead in a mass grave.
Attack criticised
Mohammed Hazran, Abyan's deputy governor, said that 10 al-Qaeda suspects
were killed in the attack, including Mohammed Saleh al-Kazemi, a Saudi who
had resided in the country since fighting in Afghanistan.
He was imprisoned in Yemen for two years before being released in 2005.
A provincial security official said that "grave mistakes occurred in the
operation due to failures of information, which led to a large number of
civilian deaths".
Mansour, the resident, rejected claims that targeted site was a training
camp, and said that community was only 100 metres away from a main road and
two kilometres from an army base.
"If [al-Kazemi] was wanted, why didn't the authorities come and arrest him
all this time?" he said.
Al-Qaeda fighters are thought to be living among tribes that have raised
concerns with the central government, especially in the northeast of the
country.
Yemen's government has in recent months ordered a series of deadly raids
against Houthi fighters in the north of the country, as well as a growing
separatist campaign in the south of the country.
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