Yemen probes tanker blast

YEMEN and France launched a probe yesterday into a blast which gutted a French-flagged tanker in the Gulf of Aden amid speculation by the owners and French diplomats that the vessel was targeted by terrorists.

The Yemeni government has ruled out an assault similar to the October 2000 suicide bombing of the US destroyer USS Cole in Aden port, saying a fire aboard the Limburg supertanker caused Sunday's explosion.

But the owners of the ship, Euronav SA, said terrorists using a boat might have staged a bomb attack as the vessel prepared to be tugged to Mina al-Dabah, near Mukalla in Yemen.

There were unconfirmed reports of a boat approaching the tanker in a fashion similar to the Cole attack.

Washington has blamed the Cole attack on al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, its chief suspect in the hijacked airliner attacks on the United States on September 11 last year.

Yemen has arrested more than 100 suspected members of al-Qaida and other Islamist groups since September 11. The Arab state is bin Laden's ancestral home, and many Yemenis have been arrested abroad as suspected al-Qaida members.

"We are waiting for the investigation but, by elimination, it is very difficult to find a reason why it would have been an internal explosion," Captain Peter Raes, managing director of the management companies for Euronav's owners CMB said.

Yemeni officials said a team of three French investigators had arrived in Mukalla for the probe. The anti-terrorist section of the Paris prosecutor's office also opened an initial inquiry.

Yemen, which is trying to shed its image as a haven for militants from bin Laden's al-Qaida network, took several days to declare the Cole bombing a terror attack.

Captain Raes said all but one of the 25-member French and Bulgarian crew were rescued and were in Mukalla, some 500 miles away from the capital Sanaa, where they were being questioned. The remaining crewman, a Bulgarian, has been declared missing.

In London, a radical Muslim cleric with suspected links to al-Qaida and an Arab journalist with close ties to bin Laden's followers said the militant group had attacked the Limburg.

"Based on my information, Islamic groups in Yemen are uniting. Al-Qaida is not as structured but its members are joining other groups. I believe they carried out this attack," said radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri.

Yemeni Transport and Marine Affairs Minister Saeed Yafai said one of the ship's tanks exploded, igniting the fire.