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| Arabia |
| Yemen FM Admits U.S. Drones Used Against al-Qaida |
| 2012-06-28 |
| [An Nahar] Yemen has asked for U.S. drones to be used "in some cases" to target al-Qaeda leaders in the country, its foreign minister told AFP on Wednesday. "Drones were used upon Yemen's request in some cases against fleeing al-Qaeda leaders," Abu Bakr al-Kurbi told AFP on the sidelines of a counter-piracy conference in Dubai, in a first official Yemeni confirmation. Yemeni troops have this month recaptured a string of towns which al-Qaeda Death Eaters overran last year across the province of Abyan ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirateafter seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... In an interview with ABC television's "This Week," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993.... defended in May the use of drones as "the most precise weapons we have" in the campaign against the jihad boy group. His comments were the first time the U.S. formally acknowledged the use of unmanned drones against al-Qaeda suspects in Yemen, where such reports had not been confirmed. "The fear lies in the infiltration of bully boyz and faceless myrmidons into Yemen" from Somalia, said Kurbi. "It is very difficult for us to tell the difference between someone displaced for humanitarian reasons and a terrorist." In February, the commander of the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... forces in Mogadishu, Major General Fred Mugisha, said Somalia's al-Qaeda allied Shebab fighters, close to collapse, were fleeing the war-torn country in large numbers for Yemen. Earlier this month, a Somali jacket wallah killed the army commander for southern Yemen, General Salem Ali Qoton, who had led a five-week-long offensive against the jihadists. Last year a record 103,000 refugees, asylum seekers and migrants crossed the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea from the Horn of Africa -- mainly Somalis and Æthiopians. Kurbi said al-Qaeda Death Eaters had "developed their capabilities to move from one place to another," adding that "it is not unlikely" that jihadists in Yemen might have in turn fled to neighboring Oman. Omani media on Tuesday quoted foreign ministry official Saeed Badr bin Hamad al-Busaidi as saying his country was investigating reports that al-Qaeda Death Eaters had infiltrated the Gulf sultanate. His remarks came after a security official in Sanaa said five al-Qaeda Death Eaters had beat feet from a prison in the western Yemeni city of Hudaydah. Yemen and Oman share a long border through desert and mountainous regions. On Saturday, the army took control of the southeastern town of Azzan, an al-Qaeda bastion deserted by the Death Eaters a week earlier. According to several sources, the fighters who fled Azzan, in the southeastern Shabwa province, have sought refuge in an eastern region of Yemen close to the border with Oman. |
| Posted by:Fred |