[News] Obama approves Deadly Yemen Raids
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Sun Dec 20 11:14:48 EST 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
20:50 Mecca time, 17:50 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/12/2009121954017137936.html
'US aided' deadly Yemen raids
The US provided firepower and intelligence to help the Yemeni
government launch a series of deadly raids against suspected al-Qaeda
bases in the country, the New York Times has reported.
Barack Obama, the US president, approved the military and
intelligence support after receiving a request from the Yemeni
government, the newspaper reported late on Friday, citing officials
familiar with the operations.
Yemeni security officials said that at least 34 suspected al-Qaeda
fighters were killed on Thursday in the raids, which targeted sites
in the southern province of Abyan and in the district of Arhab, which
lies northeast of the capital Sanaa.
Mohammed Albasha, a spokesman for the Yemeni embassy in Washington,
denied that the US launched missiles during the raids.
'Many more killed'
Those killed and arrested in Arhab "planned to strike at schools as
well as interests at home and abroad," Yemen's interior ministry said
on Thursday, without elaborating.
However, residents of Abyan said that there was no al-Qaeda training
camp in the area and that the raids had destroyed several homes.
Ali Mohammed Mansour, who said he helped bury the dead in a mass
grave, said that the community was only 100 metres away from a main
road and 2km from an army base.
Abbas al-Assal, a local human rights activist who was at the scene,
said 64 people were killed, including 23 children and 17 women.
"The government wants to show the world that it is serious in
pursuing al-Qaeda elements and that the south of Yemen is a refuge
for al-Qaeda. That is not true at all," al-Assal told the Associated
Press by telephone.
Mohammed Hazran, Abyan's deputy governor, said that 10 al-Qaeda
suspects were killed in the attack, including Mohammed Saleh
al-Kazemi, a Saudi who had resided in the country since fighting in
Afghanistan.
He was imprisoned in Yemen for two years before being released in 2005.
'Grave mistakes'
A provincial security official said that "grave mistakes occurred in
the operation due to failures of information, which led to a large
number of civilian deaths".
"If [al-Kazemi] was wanted, why didn't the authorities come and
arrest him all this time?" he said.
Al-Qaeda fighters are thought to be living among tribes that have
raised concerns with the central government, especially in the
northeast of the country.
Hussein Shobokshi, a columnist for Asharq Al-Wasat newspaper, told Al
Jazeera that al-Qaeda fighters were working with members of the
Houthi rebel group, which is fighting the government in the north of
the country.
"Ideologically they are very different, however, in a very
Machiavellian way they have decided that joining forces would
definitely increase the effectiveness of the military campaign
against the Yemeni govenment," he said from Beirut.
Yemen's government has in recent months ordered a series of deadly
raids against Houthi fighters in the north of the country, as well as
a growing separatist campaign in the south of the country.
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