96 Yemeni soldiers killed in suicide bombing

A Yemeni nurse checks on a wounded police­man who was injured in a sui­cide bomb attack at parade square in a hos­pi­tal in Sanaa, Yemen, Mon­day. Offi­cials say the bomb­ing near Sanaa’s pres­i­den­tial palace is one of the dead­liest attacks in the city in months. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

AHMED AL-HAJ, MAGGIE MICHAEL

Asso­ci­ated Press

SANAA, Yemen — A Yemeni sol­dier det­o­nated a bomb hid­den in his mil­i­tary uni­form dur­ing a rehearsal for a mil­i­tary parade, killing 96 fel­low sol­diers and wound­ing at least 200 on Mon­day in one of the dead­liest attacks in the cap­i­tal in years.

Al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen claimed respon­si­bil­ity, say­ing in an emailed state­ment that the sui­cide attack was intended to avenge a U.S.-backed offen­sive against al-Qaida in a swath of south­ern Yemen seized by the mil­i­tant move­ment last year.

The bomb­ing left a scene of car­nage, with scores of bleed­ing sol­diers lying on the ground as ambu­lances rushed to the scene. Sev­eral sev­ered heads were on the pave­ment amid large pools of blood and human remains.

“This is a real mas­sacre,” said Ahmed Sobhi, one of the sol­diers who wit­nessed the blast. “This is unbe­liev­able. I am still shak­ing. The place turned into hell. I thought this only hap­pens in movies.”

Al-Qaida said the bomber was tar­get­ing Yemen’s defense min­is­ter, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Nasser Ahmed, who had arrived at the heav­ily secured city square to greet the assem­bled troops just min­utes before the blast ripped through the area. He was unhurt.

Khaled Ali, another sol­dier, said the explo­sion was fol­lowed by heavy gunfire.

“In the may­hem, we were all run­ning in all direc­tions. I saw the guards of the min­is­ter sur­round­ing him and form­ing a human cor­don. They were fir­ing in the air,” he said.

The bomb­ing comes as Yemeni Pres­i­dent Abed Rabbo Man­sour Hadi has been press­ing ahead on two dif­fi­cult fronts — bat­tling al-Qaida in the south and purg­ing loy­al­ists of ousted leader Ali Abdul­lah Saleh from mil­i­tary and secu­rity top posts.

Saleh stepped down in Feb­ru­ary as part of a U.S.-backed, power-transfer deal bro­kered by Gulf Arab coun­tries aimed at end­ing polit­i­cal unrest in the coun­try after a year­long upris­ing. The deal gave Saleh immu­nity from pros­e­cu­tion in return for relin­quish­ing his power.

Saleh orig­i­nally appointed Ahmed to lead the defense min­istry but recently has pressed from behind the scenes for his dis­missal because Ahmed has been coop­er­at­ing with Hadi.

Mil­i­tary offi­cials said the bomber belonged to the Cen­tral Secu­rity, a para­mil­i­tary force com­manded by Saleh’s nephew Yahia Saleh. He det­o­nated his explo­sives in the midst of the Cen­tral Secu­rity unit as it received orders to pass in front of the parade view stand where both the defense min­is­ter and the mil­i­tary chief of staff were sitting.

“They are play­ing their last cards and black­mail­ing the new lead­er­ship,” said polit­i­cal ana­lyst Abdel-Bari Taher. “This is one des­per­ate attempt by both al-Qaida and Saleh’s regime to survive.”

Shortly after the attack, Hadi demoted two of Saleh’s rel­a­tives, includ­ing Yahia, from their top posi­tions in the Cen­tral Secu­rity forces and the Inte­rior Ministry.

A state­ment in Hadi’s name read on state TV said, “The war on ter­ror­ism will con­tinue until we win, what­ever the sac­ri­fices are.”

“We are speed­ing up the restruc­tur­ing of the army to bring back sta­bil­ity to the coun­try, which was on a brink of all-out war,” the state­ment said.

Sol­diers who were at the site told The Asso­ci­ated Press that the bomber could not have been an out­sider. The sol­diers said their com­man­ders selected them from dif­fer­ent branches of the mil­i­tary to par­tic­i­pate in the parade, and that they had been prac­tic­ing together for a week.

The site of the attack, close to the pres­i­den­tial palace, had been sealed off by Repub­li­can Guard forces for the pre­vi­ous 24 hours in prepa­ra­tion for the National Day cel­e­bra­tions on Tues­day. No cars or pedes­tri­ans were allowed to enter. The Repub­li­can Guard is led by Saleh’s son and one-time heir appar­ent, Ahmed Saleh.

Saleh, who ruled Yemen for some 33 years, was a key part­ner with the U.S., which poured in mil­lions of dol­lars in aid and train­ing to fight al-Qaida.

How­ever, Saleh was seen as unre­li­able. He directed funds toward bol­ster­ing units led by fam­ily mem­bers and die-hard loy­al­ists. He often struck deals with Islamic mil­i­tants, even releas­ing some from prison, as a tool to play his foes off against each other.

Dur­ing the 1990s, Saleh ordered inte­gra­tion of Yemeni Islamic mil­i­tants in the army ranks after their return from the fight against the Sovi­ets in Afghanistan.

In its state­ment Mon­day, al-Qaida said “our main bat­tle is against Amer­ica so don’t stand as a deter­rent in the way or be tools or sol­diers com­manded by John Bren­nan and the Amer­i­can ambas­sador in Sanaa,” a ref­er­ence to the White House’s top coun­tert­er­ror­ism adviser who vis­ited Yemen last week.

The White House said Bren­nan called Yemen’s pres­i­dent to con­demn the attack and offer U.S. assis­tance in the investigation.

The attack came one week after the leader of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahri, released an audio record­ing online scold­ing Hadi and describ­ing him as a U.S. agent and a traitor.

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion has thrown its sup­port behind Hadi and his fight against al-Qaida in the Ara­bian Penin­sula, which was behind three failed bomb plots on U.S. soil.

With U.S. help, Yemen’s mil­i­tary launched a wide and so far a suc­cess­ful offen­sive on sev­eral fronts in the south over the past week. Yemeni offi­cials said ear­lier that nearly 60 U.S. troops were steer­ing the offen­sive at the al-Annad air base in Lahj province.

The Pen­ta­gon also con­firmed Mon­day that three civil­ian con­trac­tors help­ing train Yemen’s coast guard were attacked in Yemen. Cmdr. Bill Speaks, a Defense Depart­ment spokesman, said that injuries were minor.

The three were trav­el­ing in a car in the Red Sea port city of Hodeida on Sun­day, when they were shot at by mil­i­tants in another vehicle.

Al-Qaida claimed respon­si­bil­ity for that attack as well.

“After we have wit­nessed the Amer­i­can involve­ment in Yemen, we call upon all free Mus­lims in Yemen to tar­get Amer­i­cans every­where,” the group said. It was not pos­si­ble to ver­ify the authen­tic­ity of either state­ment attrib­uted to al-Qaida.

Yemen, the ances­tral home­land of Osama bin Laden, was the site of the 2000 bomb­ing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 Amer­i­can sailors. There have also been a spate of assaults on the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, includ­ing a 2008 bomb­ing that killed 10 Yemeni guards and four civilians.

Posted by AP News on May 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.