Al Qaeda claims responsibility for attack on UK envoy in Yemen

London, May 12 (ANI): The Yemen unit of Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the suicide attack attempt on Britain’s Ambassador to that country, Tim Torlot.

It identified Uthman Noman al-Salwi as the would be assassin.

Ambassador, Tim Torlot, a 52-year-old career diplomat, who has served in the Arab state since July 2007 escaped injury when al-Salwi, dressed in a schoolboy’s shirt and suicide vest threw himself at the ambassador’s armour-plated vehicle in the capital, Sanaa.

The Times quotes the terrorist monitoring organisation SITE, as saying that it was in possession of a communiqui from AQAB which identfied al-Salwi as a member of the organisation’s ‘Brigade of Sheikh Abu Omar al-Baghdadi,’.

Al-Salwi, 22, had previously been jailed for two years for suspected ties to al-Qaida.

His father said in an interview after the April 26 bombing that authorities had agreed to release his son into parental custody as long as he checked in with police daily and attended school. Instead, he said his son disappeared without notifying his family of his whereabouts.

Torlot was reportedly about 600 yards from the embassy in the new part of Sanaa, close to the heavily fortified US mission, when he was attacked.

The attack has heightened concerns about security in Yemen, where AQAB, a relatively new organization. (ANI)