Al-Qaida terrorists killed in Yemen

Two suspected al-Qaida terrorists were killed in clashes outside the Yemeni capital San’a today as the US and British embassies remained closed for a second day by terror threats.

The fighting was in a region where the government last month raided an al-Qaida cell it said was plotting attacks against foreigners.

In today’s clashes troops attacked a group of al Qaida including Nazeeh al-Hanaq, a senior figure on Yemen’s most wanted list, as they moved through the mountainous area of Arhab.

Al-Hanaq escaped, but two fighters with him were killed.

Yemen has carried out a string of raids on al-Qaida hideouts in the past month, part of an intensified effort to stamp out the terror group’s growing presence.

US President Barack Obama said al Qaida’s offshoot in Yemen was behind the failed attempt to bomb a US airliner heading to Detroit on Christmas Day. The United States and Britain have dramatically ramped up counter-terrorism aid to San’a, including helping train and fund special units to combat the group.

Al-Qaida has several hundred members in Yemen and is actively planning attacks against US targets, according to US counterterrorism experts.

In assisting Yemen against al-Qaida, the United States has to tread carefully. The Yemeni government is friendly to the West but the population is often mistrustful of Western motives and influence – and too direct an American intervention can embarrass the leadership.

Yemen has pledged to clamp down on militancy, but government control is weak outside the capital and the country has a history of freeing some militants and tolerating others.

The government is also besieged by other mounting crises: a war in the north with Shiite rebels, separatist unrest in the south, and increasing poverty among the population of 22 million.

Al-Qaida – including some arriving from warzones in Iraq and Afghanistan – have built up strongholds in remote provinces of the country, sometimes aided by tribes disgruntled with the San’a government.

Yemen, the ancestral homeland of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, was the site of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 US sailors. A 2008 attack on the US Embassy killed one American.