[News] Obama approves Deadly Yemen Raids

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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.






Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20091220/ee5034f6/attachment.htm>