Yemen foils attack on base used by US troops

Aden: The Yemeni army on Saturday foiled a car bomb attack on the Anad air base used by US soldiers in the southern province of Lahj to train local forces in combating terrorism, officials said.

“We foiled an attack by a car packed with explosives that managed to breach several security checkpoints leading into the air base,” said a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He said “Americans on the base were the target of the attack.”

According to the official, some “15 American soldiers have been on the base for two months training Yemeni forces in combating terrorism.”

The car was “disarmed” and an investigation launched, he said, without reporting any arrests, although the army “suspects Al Qaida” was likely to be responsible.

The defence ministry confirmed the incident and accused the terrorist group of planning an assault on the base.

“The military police defeated an afternoon attack on the Al Anad base,” the ministry website quoted Lahj governor Ahmad Abdullah Al Majidi as saying.

“The vehicle belongs to Al Qaida,” Al Majidi said, adding that its seizure led to the discovery of a “large quantity of explosives, gas cylinders and anti-tank rockets and clothes for female drivers.”

The car was found on Saturday in a wooded area of the air base, though it had apparently been “smuggled in several days ago,” the military official added. “The attack was to be implemented today [Saturday].”

He did not explain why the attackers failed to detonate the explosives immediately after the car was smuggled into the base.

Taking advantage of the weakening of central government control by an Arab Spring-inspired uprising last year, Al Qaida overran most of southern Yemen’s Abyan province, seizing its capital Zinjibar and several other towns.

On May 12, under orders from President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the army launched a massive offensive to recapture territory lost to the militants.

Western diplomats at the time said US experts were assisting the army in their battle to destroy Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the network’s local branch, considered by Washington to be the deadliest and most active.

The United States also continues to target militants using unmanned drones against AQAP.

On Thursday, a drone strike blasted two cars carrying suspected Al Qaida gunmen in the southern province of Shabwa, killing five of them, a tribal chief and witnesses said.

In other developments on Saturday, six people were hurt when a cluster bomb exploded as youths were tampering with it, witnesses said.

The incident occurred in Mudia, in Abyan province, after the explosive device had been found in the nearby village of Al Maajala, where AQAP is still active.

And an “outlaw” was killed and two others wounded in a gunfight with security forces during an attack on a police checkpoint in Aden’s Al Mansura district, the official Saba news agency said.