Yemen foils attacks on oil plants

[jpak]

http://www.kuwaittimes.net/Navariednews.asp?dismode=article&artid=1651639687

SANAA: Authorities foiled an attempt by suicide bombers to blow up two oil installations with explosives-laden cars in near-simultaneous attacks yesterday just days after Al-Qaeda threatened to strike facilities in the Arabian Gulf. The four attackers and a guard were killed. The violence coincided with a feverish presidential election campaign in which President Ali Abdullah Saleh, facing his first real challenge since he became head of state in 1978, has reached out to the country's most strident Islamist movement, an alliance some believe will only embolden extremists.

No group has claimed the back-to-back bombings, and government officials say it's too early to determine whether Al-Qaeda was behind them. But there have been fears of an Al-Qaeda attack since 23 members of the network tunnelled out of a Yemeni jail in February with help from prison warders. Fourteen of the prisoners remain at large. Al-Qaeda has an active presence in Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, despite government efforts to fight the network. The group has been blamed for the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole destroyer in Aden that killed 17 American sailors and the attack on the French oil tanker, the Limburg, that killed one person two years later. After the Cole bombing and the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the West began pressuring Yemen to join the war against terror.

Saleh launched several crackdowns against extremists, winning praise from the United States. But February's prison escape raised worries the government's fight against Al-Qaeda was softening. Analysts say yesterday's violence has Al-Qaeda's fingerprints, especially since it came so soon after Monday's videotape from the network's No. 2, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, threatening attacks on the Arabian Gulf and on facilities he blamed for stealing Muslim oil. The four bombers struck in two groups during early morning shift changes at the facilities.

In the first attack, two suicide bombers drove "at great speed" toward the Dubba Port at 5:15 am (0215 GMT) in an attempt to blow up storage tanks "filled with a huge amount of oil", the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The driver of the first car was dressed in a uniform similar to those worn by staff at the facility, and the second driver was in a military uniform, the statement said. It said guards at the port "managed to blow up the rigged cars before they reached their targets." A security guard was killed while "remains of the two terrorist attackers were strewn all over the place," the statement said. Shrapnel from the exploding cars sparked a small fire in one of the storage tanks, but it was quickly put out, it added.

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