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U.S.: Strike on Yemen embassy was attempt to breach its walls
The United States said Wednesday that a vicious attack on its embassy in the Yemeni capital earlier in the day was a failed attempt to breach the compound's walls. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters that the embassy's security upgrades, combined with the response of security officials, were effective in stopping attackers armed with automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and at least one suicide car bomb. Officials say sixteen people were killed, including six assailants. McCormack said that no Americans were hurt, but that a U.S. embassy guard from Yemen was killed, along with several Yemeni security officials and some terrorists. The assault bore all the hallmarks of an al-Qaida attack, he said. A group calling itself Islamic Jihad in Yemen claimed responsibility for the bombing, which it said was a suicide attack. The group threatened attacks on embassies of other nations, including those of Britain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. It had threatened in a previous statement Tuesday to launch a series of attacks unless the Yemeni government met its demands for the release of several of its members from jail. "We, the organization of Islamic Jihad in Yemen declare our responsibility for the suicide attack on the American embassy in Sanaa," the statement read. "We will carry out the rest of the series of attacks on the other embassies that were declared previously, until our demands are met by the Yemeni government." TV news networks Al-Jazeera of Qatar and Al-Arabiya of Saudi Arabia reported a car bomb explosion outside the embassy and an exchange of gunfire between guards and unidentified assailants. A second car carrying gunmen in police uniforms arrived at the scene soon after the car bomb exploded, they said, adding that the gunmen had immediately begun firing at the embassy's guards. A fire also broke out in one of the embassy's buildings, the two stations reported. A medical official said at least seven Yemeni nationals were wounded and taken to the city's Republican hospital. They are residents of a housing compound near the embassy and included children, he said. An Associated Press reporter at the scene said ambulance cars were rushing to the area and that hundreds of heavily armed security forces were deployed around the embassy. Police kept reporters well away from the immediate vicinity of the embassy, he said. The embassy has repeatedly been the target of attacks. In March, three mortar rounds targeting the American mission crashed into a high school for girls next door, killing a Yemeni security guard and wounding more than a dozen girls. In 2006, a gunman opened fire outside the embassy but was shot and arrested by Yemeni guards. The gunman, armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, claimed he wanted to kill Americans. In March 2003, two people were fatally shot and dozens more were injured when police clashed with demonstrators trying to storm the embassy when tens of thousands rallied against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Almost exactly one year earlier, a Yemeni man lobbed a sound grenade into the embassy grounds a day after Vice President Dick Cheney made a stop for talks with officials at Sanaa airport. The attacker, who allegedly sought to retaliate against what he called American bias toward Israel, was sentenced to 10 years in prison but the sentence was later reduced to seven years. Al-Qaida has an active presence in Yemen despite government efforts to destroy it. The group was blamed for the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole destroyer in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 American sailors and an attack on a French oil tanker that killed one person two years later. Posted by: Fred 2008-09-18 |
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