THIRTEEN people, including 10 members of the Yemeni security forces, were killed today and a number of suspected al Qaeda prisoners were freed in an attack on an intelligence headquarters in the southern port city of Aden
A building housing the intelligence services in the Al-Tawahi district near the port came under fire from a group of men armed with rocket-propelled grenades, grenades and machine guns.
An unknown number of prisoners suspected of being members of al Qaeda were also set free, officials said on condition of anonymity, adding that the attack may have been the work of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Witnesses also said the assailants “were seen leaving the building in a bus, taking people who had been detained there with them,” in what appeared to be a coordinated and well-planned operation.
There were no casualties among the attackers, the witnesses said.
Medics reported that three of the dead were female cleaners and “the remaining dead were members of the intelligence” services. At least 12 other people were wounded in the attack, they said.
Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Usama bin Laden, has witnessed numerous attacks claimed by al Qaeda on foreign missions, tourist sites and oil installations.
In October 2000, militants in an explosive-packed high-speed boat blew a hole in the side of American warship the USS Cole in Aden, killing 17 sailors.
Two years later, the French-registered supertanker Limburg was damaged by another bomb-laden boat in an attack also attributed to al Qaeda, in the southeast port of Ash-Shir, east of Aden.
Sanaa has intensified operations against the local Al-Qaeda franchise in the wake of the attempted December 24 bombing of a U.S. airliner by a Nigerian believed to have been trained and supplied by AQAP.
Just this week, AQAP urged Yemen’s eastern tribes to rise against the government and threatened retaliation for alleged air strikes in the area, the U.S. monitoring group SITE said on Friday.
“Allah willing, we will light up the ground with fire under the tyrants of infidelity in the regime of (Yemeni President) Ali (Abdullah) Saleh and his helpers, the agents of America,” SITE quoted the group as saying.
In late May, provincial official Jaber Ali al-Shabwani and four of his bodyguards were killed in an air strike in Marib province that reportedly targeted a wanted al Qaeda suspect.
A local official said Shabwani had been negotiating for a week for the man’s surrender and had gone for talks to the farm that was hit in the air strike.
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