16 dead in attack at US Embassy in Yemen

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16 dead in attack at US Embassy in Yemen

September 17, 2008

By PAUL SCHEMM and AHMED AL-HAJ, Associated Press Writers

SAN'A, Yemen

Militants linked to al-Qaida launched a brazen attack against the

U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital Wednesday, firing automatic

weapons and setting off grenades and a car bomb in a furious

fusillade that failed to breach the walls but killed 16 people,

including a newly wed New York woman.

It was the deadliest direct assault on a U.S. Embassy in a decade

claiming the lives of six attackers, six guards and four civilians.

Yemeni security officials said civilian casualties could have been

far worse. The streets were relatively empty because many people

sleep late during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from

sunrise to sunset. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity

because they were not authorized to talk to press.

About 9:15 a.m., multiple explosions from the car bomb and grenades

shook the affluent Dhahr Himyar district, a residential area dotted

with five-star hotels and other embassies. Palls of black smoke rose

over the street, lined with modern buildings in the style of the

centuries-old white-trimmed mud brick houses that are a landmark of

San'a's Old City. Snipers hidden across the street fired on emergency

personnel rushing to the scene.

The attackers, some dressed in army uniforms, were stopped short of

the compound's walls by guards and massive security barriers, but

civilians waiting in line for visas outside the embassy were among

the casualties. Three police officers and seven civilians were

injured, including children in a residential compound across the

street from the embassy, home to many Westerners.

Elbaneh, 18, a U.S. citizen from Lackawanna, N.Y., who was

recently wed in Yemen in an arranged marriage, was killed along with

her Yemeni husband as they stood outside the embassy, family members

said Wednesday. They were apparently there to do paperwork for the

husband's move to the U.S. when the attackers struck, said Elbaneh's

brother, Ahmed.

Elbaneh's family was gathering at her father Ali's house Wednesday

afternoon.

Two FBI agents who arrived to speak with family member at the home

would not comment beyond saying they were there to talk to the family.

Elbaneh is one of eight children in the family, which her brother

described as a " huge and close-knit. "

She had been in Yemen for a month for the marriage on Aug. 25.

" She was excited. We threw her a shower. It wasn't like we were

worried about anything. Tragedies happen. They are innocent victims

in all of this, " Ahmed Elbaneh said.

President W. Bush called the attack " a reminder that we are at

war with extremists who will murder innocent people to achieve their

ideological objectives. "

The U.S. counts Yemen as an ally in the war on terrorism. But

American officials have long been frustrated over what is seen as

a " revolving door " policy toward al-Qaida militants by President Ali

Abdullah Saleh's government.

Yemen has let some convicted militants go free after promising to

refrain from violence.

In 2006, a group of 23 militants escaped from a high-security prison,

including 10 figures convicted in al-Qaida's 2000 bombing of the USS

Cole destroyer in Aden harbor. There were widespread reports of

security officials' collusion in the escape, and experts say Yemen's

security and intelligence services are riddled with militant

sympathizers.

State control is weak in the impoverished country—the ancestral

homeland of Osama bin Laden—tribes are strong and many mountainous

rural areas are lawless, giving ample room for militant training

camps.

In separate statements, the U.N. Security Council and Secretary

General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks and called for the

perpetrators to be brought to justice.

The U.S. Embassy has been attacked four times since 2003, most

recently in March when a volley of mortars targeting the compound hit

a neighboring girls high school instead, killing a Yemeni guard and

wounding dozens of girls.

Just last month, the State Department allowed the return of non-

essential embassy personnel and family members who had been ordered

to leave after the mortars.

But Wednesday's attack was by far the deadliest and best coordinated.

It began when gunmen armed with automatic weapons and rocket-

propelled grenades attacked a Yemeni police checkpoint at the outer

ring of security around the embassy. Amid the firefight, suicide

bombers in a vehicle made it through the checkpoint, barreled into a

second, inner ring of concrete blocks, and detonated, Yemeni security

officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they

were not authorized to talk to the press.

During the assault, gunmen hidden across the street also fired on

Yemeni emergency personnel rushing to the scene, a U.S. official in

Washington said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to

describe an internal Bush administration briefing.

There was no immediate public claim of responsibility for the attack.

Some Yemeni security officials said a local militant group called

Islamic Jihad, which Yemeni authorities have cracked down on

previously, claimed responsibility. But Yemeni authorities have

blamed the group in past attacks that have later been claimed by al-

Qaida in postings on the Internet. The group is unrelated to the

Palestinian group of the same name.

But suspicion was immediately centered on al-Qaida, which has long

operated in the country on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula.

Yemen has been a focus of American counterterrorism efforts ever

since the 2000 Cole attack, in which 17 American sailors were killed

by suicide bombers on a boat. A similar attack two years later hit a

French oil tanker, killing one person. Since that attack and the

Sept. 11 attacks, Yemen has been cracking down on militants, earning

praise from Washington.

But American officials have increasingly grumbled over what they see

as Yemen's failures to keep suspects in custody and its willingness

to compromise with militants.

Seventeen suspects in the Cole bombing were arrested, but 10 escaped

in the 2006 prison break although some have since been recaptured or

killed or surrendered.

The bombing's mastermind, Jamal al-Badawi, was sentenced to death in

2004, though the sentence was commuted to 15 years in prison. He

escaped jail in 2004. He surrendered in October but was set free once

he renounced terrorism, according to Yemeni security officials. After

pressure from the U.S., Yemen announced he had been taken back into

custody.

Washington was also angered when a Yemeni-American, Jaber Elbaneh,

convicted in Yemen for planning attacks on oil installations, was

freed as he appealed his 10-year prison sentence. Elbaneh has since

been taken back in custody, but San'a has refused American requests

that Elbaneh be handed over to the U.S. for trial on charges of

provide material support to terrorism.

Several other lower-level militants have been freed after promising

not to carry out attacks. The promises were made as part of a

government rehabilitation program, which has frequently allied with

Islamic extremist political groups.

During a June visit to San'a, President Bush's homeland security

adviser Wainstein pushed Saleh for " strong and serious

measures to be carried out in Yemeni courts to try the terrorists and

to hold them accountable. "

In the meantime, militant violence has increased. A suicide car

bomber attacked tourists visiting a temple linked to the ancient

Queen of Sheba in central Yemen in 2007, killing eight Spaniards and

two Yemenis. Yemeni authorities blamed that attack on an al-Qaida

cell. In January, suspected al-Qaida gunmen fired on a tourist convoy

in a remote desert mountain valley, killing two Belgian women and

their Yemeni driver.

This year has also seen mortar attacks near the Italian Embassy and a

bombing on a compound housing foreigners, neither of which caused

casualties.

• __

Associated Press reporter Ahmed el-Haj in San'a and Lee in

Washington contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material

may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2008 KEZI. All rights reserved. This material may not be

published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. AP contributed to

this report.