[An Nahar] Suspected al-Qaeda gunnies riding on the back of a cycle of violence rubbed out a Yemeni intelligence officer in the south of the country on Saturday, a security official told Agence La Belle France Presse.The colonel was in his car at a market in Taben, a town in the southern Lahij province, when one of the two attackers shot up him from a Kalashnikov, the official said.
The officer was killed on the spot and the attackers expeditiously departed at a goodly pace, said the source blaming al-Qaeda for the killing.
A cheap form of transport frequently replacing taxis in the impoverished country, motorbikes have become a tool for hit-and-run shootings that have killed dozens of officials in recent years.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), seen by Washington as the network's deadliest franchise, has been blamed for most of the motorbike attacks on the security forces despite never claiming them.
In December, Yemen enforced a temporary ban on motorbikes in the capital to prevent attacks as the politicians engaged in a national dialogue talks.
On Wednesday, Yemeni police potted two al-Qaeda suspects who were allegedly involved in a series of hit-and-run attacks against security personnel in the capital.
The next day, however, a gunman riding on the back of a motorbike rubbed out a Yemeni intelligence officer and his son in the southeastern city of Mukalla in broad daylight.
Al-Qaeda exploited the 11-month-long 2011 uprising that led to the ouster of longtime strongman President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh
... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it...
to seize large swathes of southern and eastern Yemen.
The army recaptured several major towns in 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...
and Shabwa provinces further west in 2012 but has struggled to reassert control in rural areas despite recruiting militia allies among the local tribes.