Yemen strikes at al Qaeda, Britain stops flights
SANAA (Reuters) - Yemeni war planes struck at the rural home of an al Qaeda leader on Wednesday, pressing a government offensive against militants whose presence in the Arab country has alarmed Western governments.
In London, the government said it was suspending direct flights by Yemen's national airline to the UK due to security concerns.
Sanaa declared war on al Qaeda last week as pressure grew for a crackdown on the global militant group after its Yemen-based wing said it was behind an attempt on December 25 to bomb a U.S.-bound passenger plane.
"The home of the terrorist Ayed al-Shabwani was targeted in an air raid today," a Yemeni official told Reuters. It was not known if Shabwani was at home in Maarib, east of Sanaa, at the time.
A security official said that al Qaeda militants led by Shabwani had used his farm to launch attacks on foreign tourists, power facilities and oil pipelines.
"They ... were even shooting at planes flying on training missions in the region," the unnamed official told the state news agency Saba, adding that the results of Wednesday's raid were being evaluated.
Shabwani was one of six al Qaeda militants that the government had previously said died in an air strike last week. Al Qaeda later denied any of its members had been killed.
Separately, Yemeni forces shot dead an al Qaeda fighter who tried to steal a government vehicle, state media reported.
Western powers and neighbouring Saudi Arabia fear that Yemen could become a failed state, allowing al Qaeda to use the country as a launch pad for further international attacks.
The Yemeni authorities are also fighting a northern Shi'ite insurgency and face separatist sentiment in the south.
Yemen has occasionally been hasty in announcing the deaths of militants. It said last month that another militant, Anwar al-Awlaki, might have been killed in an air strike,
But the death of the U.S.-Yemeni cleric, said to have traded emails with an American army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at a Texas army base in November, was never confirmed.
Amid the rising instability, Yemen's central bank said it injected $150 million into the foreign exchange market, but traders said the intervention did not stop the rial currency from falling to its lowest levels in years.
LONDON FLIGHT SUSPENDED
Britain suspended flights from Yemen under measures to tighten up border security, Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament on Wednesday.
"We know that a number of terrorist cells are actively trying to attack Britain and other countries," he said.
Britain told Yemenia that its aircraft must first stop in a third country for security checks if they wanted to fly to London, an official of the airline told Reuters in Sanaa.
Greater scrutiny of suspect airline passengers and closer global cooperation announced by Brown are aimed at preventing a repeat of intelligence mistakes that allowed the Nigerian suspect in the Detroit plot to board a U.S.-bound flight.
Washington is considering allowing the Pentagon to train and equip a wider range of security forces, among them special counterterrorism units controlled by Yemen's Interior Ministry.
A report by a Senate committee said that some U.S. citizens suspected of training in al Qaeda camps in Yemen, including dozens who converted to Islam in prison, may pose a serious threat to the United States.
Two groups of Americans based in Yemen are causing concern for U.S. counter-terrorism experts in the Gulf region, according to the report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, prepared for release on Wednesday.
Most worrisome is a group of up to 36 former U.S. criminals who converted to Islam in prison and arrived in Yemen in the past year, ostensibly to study Arabic, the report said.
(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell and Adam Entous in Washington, Louis Charbonneau in New York, and Mohammed Mokhashef in Aden; writing by Cynthia Johnston, editing by David Stamp)