Yemen says it has thwarted terror plot; U.S. officials still on high alert

SANAA, Yemen – Yemeni authorities say they have thwarted a bold plot by al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch to disrupt this country’s economic lifeline by attacking two strategic southern ports and oil and gas facilities.

It was not immediately clear whether the foiled plot was the attack alluded to in communications intercepted by intelligence agencies last week. U.S. intelligence officials are skeptical the danger has passed and said they remain on high alert.

The intercepted messages —indicating that al-Qaeda’s leader has urged the group’s Yemen affiliate to attack Western targets — prompted U.S. officials to temporarily shut down embassies across the Middle East and North Africa, a highly unusual move.

The Obama administration alsoauthorized a series of drone strikes as part of an effort to disrupt the plot, including a strike on Wednesday in southern Yemen that killed seven alleged militants.

One U.S. official said the plot as described by Yemen’s government may have been only one component of a broader plan to hit Western targets. Officials said that as of Tuesday, there was no indication that any of the recent drone strikes resulted in the deaths of senior al-Qaeda operatives.

“It’s too early to tell whether we’ve actually disrupted anything,” a senior U.S. official said Tuesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The official described the renewed air assault as part of a coordinated response to intelligence that has alarmed counterterrorism officials but lacks specific details about what al-Qaeda may target or when.

The plot described Wednesday by Rajeh Badi, a spokesman for Prime Minister Mohammed Basindwa, involved seizing control of Mukalla, a vital sea port and capital of the Hadramaut governorate, and Bawzeer, another key port roughly 27 miles from Mukalla. Both ports employ a large number of workers from Western countries.

At the same time, separate groups of militants were to target the Belhaf gas pipeline in Yemen’s southern Shabwa province, as well other gas facilities there, Badi said. The militants planned to disguise themselves in Coast Guard uniforms and stage a fake strike demanding unpaid bonuses for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Ramadan ends this week, followed by the traditional Eid festivities.

“While they would have some chaos in Mukalla, other al-Qaeda militants would also be attacking the Belhaf pipeline,” Badi said.

Yemeni government officials said the ultimate goal of the militants was to take over the city of Mukalla, controlling it and, by extension, the province. If successful, the move would have been similar to what al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the terror network’s Yemen branch is called, did in 2011 when it seized control of large parts of Abyan province.

“We found out through our military sources about these plots, and so we took the necessary actions to make them fail,” said Badi. “This is the first time they have tried to take over the city of Mukalla.” He would not elaborate on what measures were taken to thwart the plot, or by whom.

Embassy closures

Yemen is the home base of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the branch of the terrorist group thought to be the most likely to attack U.S. or Western interests. The worldwide focus on the possibility of a major attack was heightened, in part, by the fact that Wednesday marks the 15th anniversary of the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed a total of 224 people.

The U.S. Embassy in Yemen was among 19 that were closed through Saturday, as were embassies in Yemen representing several European nations. The British Embassy in Sanaa said Tuesday that it had removed its staff.

The State Department on Tuesday evacuated much of the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and urged all Americans to leave the country immediately, issuing a global travel alert that described an “extremely high” security threat level in Yemen.

The actions drew a sharp rebuke from the Yemeni government, which said the evacuation “serves the interests of the extremists and undermines the exceptional cooperation between Yemen and the international alliance against terrorism.”

“Yemen has taken all necessary precautions to ensure the safety and security of foreign missions in the capital,” the Yemeni Embassy in Washington said in a statement.

State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki took issue with Yemen’s assertion that the U.S. move rewards terrorists and said the decision to remove Americans from the country for safety reasons speaks for itself.

At the same time, jihadists took to Web forums to celebrate the closure of the embassies, with some boasting that doing so was a “nightmare” for the United States, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a nonprofit organization that monitors the forums.

Drone attacks

The burst of drone activity in Yemen over the past 10 days, after a seven-week period in which there were no strikes, provides new insight into the Obama administration’s approach to counterterrorism operations.

U.S. officials said the CIA and the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which operate parallel drone campaigns in Yemen, have refrained from launching missiles for several months in part because of more restrictive targeting guidelines imposed by President Obama this year. Those new rules, however, allow for strikes to resume in response to an elevated threat.

“They have been holding fire,” said a U.S. official with access to information about the al-Qaeda threat and the drone campaign. But intercepted communications between al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is believed to be in Pakistan, and his counterpart in Yemen, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, raised concern that the network is preparing an assault on Western targets, and prompted a new wave of strikes in response.

“The chatter is coming from Yemen,” the official said. Embassies outside the region were closed not because they were specifically mentioned but because in Yemen and other countries, they would be prominent targets.

A few dozen U.S. Special Operations troops have been stationed in Yemen since last year to train Yemeni counterterrorism forces and to help pinpoint targets for airstrikes against al-Qaeda targets in the country. The U.S. military carries out drone strikes in Yemen from its base in Djibouti, while the CIA flies armed drones from a separate base in Saudi Arabia.

The CIA and the U.S. military have carried out 16 drone strikes in Yemen this year, according to the New America Foundation, which monitors the drone campaign. Last year, a record 54 strikes occurred.

The Pentagon said it will keep an undisclosed number of military personnel in Yemen to support the U.S. Embassy “and monitor the security situation.”

Raghavan reported from Nairobi. Greg Miller and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.

Source http://m.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/yemen-says-it-has-thwarted-terror-plot-us-officials-still-on-high-alert/2013/08/07/a51f4998-ff70-11e2-96a8-d3b921c0924a_story.html?tid=HP_top

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How a cyber attack hampered Hong Kong protesters

‘The chances of nuclear use are minimal. Both Russia & Ukraine are well aware of results’: DB Venkatesh Varma

Pak off FATF Grey List; ‘Black Spot’ on Fight Against Terror Irks India; J&K Guv Says 'World is Watching'