December 17, 2009

Yemen Raids Kill 63 including Some al Qaeda and Women and Children

CNN — Authorities say military operations targeting al-Qaida hideouts and a training camp in Yemen have left up to 34 suspected militants dead, including four would-be suicide bombers, and led to the arrest of 17 others. Would be nice if it were true...

There were actually three raids in different locations. The wire services and MSM bought the Yemeni military's statement hook, line and sinker, but reports are coming out of 63 killed and over 70 wounded in a air strike on a village in southern Yemen's Abyan province. The casualties are mostly women and children.

Abyan is one of the areas where secessionist tensions have been building for nearly two years. The military's raid follows a report by Human Rights Watch that documents what we here at Jawa have known for some time. That is, the Yemeni police are shooting southern protesters in the head at close range and arbitrarily arresting hundreds, the media is under a violent assault and academics and other opinion makers are subject to arrest or political lay-offs.

Its possible the morning's air strikes in Abyan were an actual raid against al Qaeda but executed in an extremely reckless manner. There has been a lot of attention lately on the growing menace of al Qaeda in Yemen, and this is Yemeni President Saleh's style- a few highly publicized raids and everyone out the back door in a few months. The Saudis recently opened an intel outpost in Yemen's capital, so we should be seeing more action and less BS from the Saleh regime regarding al Qaeda. The Saudi bombing of Sa'ada, northern Yemen, which began November 2 make little distinction between the Houthi rebels and the civilians.

However, in southern Yemen, the attack in Abyan is perceived by some as directed against President Saleh's political opposition and as a mechanism of intimidation. The threat being that the Yemeni air force will bomb the southerners as brutally as they are bombing civilians in the northern Sa'ada province where a full blown humanitarian disaster intensifies daily.

WA PO: Yemeni forces, backed by airstrikes, killed at least 28 al-Qaeda militants and captured 17 others in Thursday a pre-dawn assault on an alleged training camp and other areas in this Middle East nation, where al-Qaeda's presence is of growing concern to U.S. officials.

The operation targeted militants planning suicide bomb attacks against Yemeni and foreign sites, including schools, according to a statement on 26Sept.net, a Yemeni Web site linked to the government's military. Several civilians were also apparently killed and homes destroyed, witnesses told local news agencies...

Thursday's operation targeted the alleged training camp in Al-Maajala, 300 miles south of the capital Sanaa, in the southern province of Abyan, a longtime haven for Islamic jihadists. The attack "led to the killing of between 24 to 30 militants of Al Qaeda, including foreign members, who carried out training," the military statement said.