Yemen Defense Minister Survives Assassination Attempt

By LAURA KASINOF

SANA, Yemen — Yemen’s defense minister survived an assassination attempt on Tuesday in the volatile southern port city of Aden when a suicide attacker exploded a car bomb next to his convoy.

It was the second time in less than a month that the defense minister, Mohammed Nasser Ahmed, had emerged unscathed from an attack on his convoy in Yemen’s restive south. In late August, two of his bodyguards died when the vehicle they were travelling in hit a landmine in Abyan province.

The government said in a statement said that several of the minster’s guards were injured in Tuesday’s attack. Witnesses said the explosion occurred in the Tuwahi district of the city, as the convoy was leaving a hotel.

The government immediately blamed the attempted assassination on “terrorists from Al Qaeda.” In Zinjibar, the provincial capital of Abyan province about 30 miles east of Aden, security forces have battled Al Qaeda-linked militants who took over the city last spring.

The attack followed the surprise return of President Ali Abdullah Saleh after four months in Saudi Arabia on Friday and followed a week of bloody urban warfare in the country’s capital, Sana, between government troops and fighters loyal to a powerful general who defected earlier this year to join protesters.

Even before fighting flared in the capital, the Yemeni government has struggled to contain its southern cities, hotbeds of antigovernment sentiment and militancy. Residents in Aden say that gangs of armed men — whose loyalties are unclear — roam the streets in several districts of the city.

While Aden has been spared from the kind of major fighting seen in Sana — with rival forces lobbing artillery back-and-forth, shaking the city — car bombings and random shootings against security forces there have increased in recent months.

Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world and a hub for Al Qaeda, remains in a state of political and economic paralysis that has stretched on for more than six months. President Saleh has repeatedly backed away at the last minute from an internationally-brokered plan for him to had over power early.

His return, after months of treatment in a Saudi hospital for wounds suffered during a bombing in his presidential palace in June, appeared unlikely to calm tensions. Tens of thousands of antigovernment demonstrations continue to hold daily protests throughout the country demanding his immediate ouster.

Source: Washington Post