Militants attack intelligence buildings in southern Yemen, leaving 2 dead

Militants attack Yemeni intelligence offices

SAN’A, Yemen — Masked gunmen riding motorcycles and armed with mortars and rocket propelled grenades attacked two intelligence buildings in southern Yemen Wednesday in the second such assault on a Yemeni security offices in less than a month.

The attack in the southern Abyan province left one security officer and one militant dead, and apparently only failed to cause more casualties because it took place early in the morning and the buildings were still empty.

It comes less than a month after an attack on the intelligence headquarters in Yemen’s second largest city, Aden, killed 11 security officers and freed an undetermined number of prisoners, and could mark a new push by suspected al-Qaida militants to target high-profile Yemeni government buildings.

The attacks have further fueled concerns that Yemen’s weak central government is struggling to tame an increasingly aggressive threat from al-Qaida militants that are setting up operations in the impoverished country.

On Wednesday, two separate groups of masked gunmen tried to storm the buildings of the intelligence headquarters in the Abyan provincial capital of Zinjibar, said the deputy governor of the southern Abyan province, Saleh el-Shamsi.

El-Shamsi said the attackers tried to “take over the two buildings” but that Yemeni guards confronted them and “foiled their plans.” He said one guard and one militant were killed, and that the attack bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida.

A local security official said that at least 20 men raced toward the two buildings chanting “God is Great” and lobbing explosives. Clashes ensued with the guards, where 10 of them were lightly wounded.

The official said the groups took advantage of the school summer break, and used the adjacent girls school to stage their attack. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.

A Yemeni Interior Ministry statement said nine of the attackers were arrested, and a search was under way for the rest.

U.S. officials say insurgents, including Americans, are training in militant camps in Yemen’s vast lawless spaces and allying with powerful tribes opposed to the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Those concerns deepened last December, when al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the failed attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner.

In the wake of the Christmas attack, with U.S. aid, training and intelligence, Yemen’s military and air force have struck at al-Qaida sites and suspected hideouts, and arrested several suspects.

The two attacks on security agencies follow a military campaign in eastern Yemen against suspected al-Qaida hideouts, which prompted the movement to issue a statement on militant websites threatening to “set the ground on fire under the tyrants of infidelity in (President) Saleh’s regime and his U.S. collaborators.”