US embassy attack shows Al Qaida's resilience in Yemen

Washington: This week's attack on the US embassy in Yemen shows Al Qaida's ability to regroup in a strategically important country and further underscores a shift in the group's focus from Iraq, analysts said.

It is a reminder that the US will have to keep fighting Al Qaida on multiple fronts even if Iraq - cast by the Bush administration as the central front in its war on terrorism - calms down.

"Al Qaida's most senior leaders have called for attacks in Yemen and elsewhere in the region, and extremist groups in Yemen have made it known in words and terrible misdeeds that they are willing to murder innocent civilians," a US counterterrorism official said.

"The attacks in Yemen are an example of their ability to strike anywhere on the battlefield at any time," said John Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Al Qaida has for years targeted US interests in and near the Arabian peninsula, the US official said.

But the embassy attack was the biggest against a US government target in Yemen since the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole, which killed 17 sailors in the port city of Aden.

The embassy strike in Sana'a killed 17 people, including an American woman and six attackers. The attackers used two suicide car bombs that triggered a series of blasts outside the embassy - signs, analysts said, of a sophisticated attack.

Changing organisation

Al Qaida in Yemen was weakened after the September 11 attacks in 2001, as President Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped up counterterrorism cooperation with the United States.

Attacks focused mainly on foreign tourists and private companies, said Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden tracking unit.

"Al Qaida's had a rough fall in Yemen, but they're an improving organisation," said Scheuer. "American embassies are a pretty tough nut to crack, but they did a pretty good job yesterday.

"This is a hard target. To me it would say that they have more confidence and that they've rebuilt to the extent that they can do something like this."

The US counterterrorism official said: "Al Qaida in Iraq is certainly struggling badly, so it's entirely likely that Al Qaida's senior leaders are looking to mount operations in other places."

Al Qaida has deep roots in Yemen. It is the ancestral home of its leader Osama Bin Laden and was a key source of fighters for the anti-Soviet brigades in Afghanistan in the 1980s that spawned Al Qaida. About one third of the roughly 250 detainees at the US Guantanamo Bay prison for foreign terrorism suspects are from Yemen.