Yemeni officials say army operations targeting al-Qaida kill up to 34 suspected militants

Yemen: Up to 34 al-Qaida militants killed

SAN’A, Yemen — Security forces struck several al-Qaida hideouts and training sites in Yemen on Thursday, killing up to 34 suspected militants, including four would-be suicide bombers who planned attacks at home and abroad. At least 17 suspected militants were arrested.

The operations against al-Qaida in the San’a area and a southern province came as Yemen is under U.S. pressure to act more vigorously against the terror network on its territory.

An impoverished nation in the Arabian Peninsula’s southwestern corner, Yemen has struggled in its efforts to deal with al-Qaida’s growing presence as well as its homegrown Islamic extremism.

Provincial security official Saleh el-Shamsy said airstrikes early Thursday followed by a ground operation targeting a training camp in the southern Abyan province killed up to 30 suspected militants.

A security official and witnesses, meanwhile, said civilians were caught up in the government offensive in Abyan, with several homes destroyed in the airstrikes and others stormed by troops who mistook them for al-Qaida hideouts.

One witness, 33-year-old Mohammed Saleh al-Kathimi, said seven bodies of women and children have so far been recovered from the rubble.

The claims by the witnesses and the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, could not be independently confirmed.

Separately, the Interior Ministry said operations were carried out in areas outside San’a, killing four would-be suicide bombers and arresting 17 suspected militants.

The suicide bombers were in the Arhab district northeast of the capital.

Those arrested included another four would-be suicide bombers, one of whom was wounded in the fighting.

“These individuals (suicide bombers) planned to strike at schools as well as interests at home and abroad,” the ministry statement said.

It did not identify the targets or the foreign countries where they allegedly planned to strike.

Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, has a weak central government with little control over the nation’s mountains and deserts. With many areas virtually lawless, easy access to firearms and rampant poverty, Yemen has become a haven of choice for al-Qaida operatives.

Al-Qaida militants, including fighters returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, have established sanctuaries among a number of Yemeni tribes, particularly ones in three provinces bordering Saudi Arabia known as the “triangle of evil” because of the heavy militant presence, according to Yemeni authorities.

Still, the government has for years closely cooperated with the U.S. in the fight against al-Qaida, although its effort has often been hampered by complex political and tribal considerations.

Yemen is also in a strategic location. It is next door to some of the world’s most important oil producing nations, like Saudi Arabia, and just across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia, an even more tumultuous nation where the U.S. has said al-Qaida militants have been increasing their activity.

It was the scene to one of al-Qaida’s most dramatic pre-9/11 attacks, the 2000 suicide bombing of the destroyer USS Cole off the Aden coast that killed 17 American sailors.