Under a heavy fog, al-Qaida militants disguised in military uniforms launched car bomb attacks on three security and military posts in southern Yemen on Friday, killing 38 soldiers in the group’s biggest attack in the country since last year.
The coordinated attacks point to how al-Qaida is exploiting the continued weakness of Yemen’s military to rally back here at a time when the group’s branches across the region grow more assertive. More than two years after a U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, factions of the group he led are taking advantage of turmoil in multiple Arab nations to expand their presence and influence.
In Syria, foreign jihadis linked to or inspired by al-Qaida have become such a powerful force in the rebellion that the Syrian opposition on Friday accused them of being opportunists hijacking the uprising against President Bashar Assad. After the coup in Egypt toppled the Islamist president, al-Qaida leaders have called on sympathizers to join militants’ fight there against the military. Iraq’s al-Qaida branch has stepped up attacks in that country and extended operations into neighboring Syria.
Last month, the U.S. temporarily closed 19 diplomatic missions across the Middle East and North Africa after intelligence agencies intercepted a message between al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri and Nasser al-Wahishi, also a one-time confidant of bin Laden who leads the Yemen branch, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
Experts in extremist networks see no clear evidence of coordination between groups under the al-Qaida banner. But gains by one serve as powerful encouragement and recruiting tools for others.
“What matters perhaps more is how they may draw inspiration from each other,” said Theodore Karasik, a security and political affairs analyst at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.
For a time, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula was perhaps the most powerful of the terror group’s branches in the region.
It was beaten back in 2012 by a Yemeni military offensive supported by a heavy campaign of U.S. drone strikes.
Friday’s attacks in the southern province of Shabwa, a one-time al-Qaida stronghold, showed the group’s continued capabilities.
Militants struck three security and military posts nearly simultaneously at 6 a.m. in an area near the Balhaf liquefied gas export terminal on the Arabian Sea coast, said Maj. Nasser Mohammed, who is with a unit in the area. Two military officials said 38 police and soldiers were killed.
Militants were dressed up in military uniforms and drove cars with army license plates, one military official said. They struck at the transition between guard shifts, catching them by surprise, indicating they had information on the force’s work schedules, the official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
In the deadliest attack, a suicide car bomber rammed his explosives-laden vehicle into the Interior Ministry’s al-Kamp Central Security camp in the area al-Mayfaa, causing most of the deaths. Clashes at another site in al-Mayfaa left at least five troops wounded, Nasser added.
Meanwhile, a car bomb was detonated prematurely outside the gates of the third site, the post in al-Ain. The blast was followed by heavy clashes during which militants seized six soldiers and a number of military vehicles. Eight militants were killed in the fighting at al-Ain, Nasser said.
Yemen’s Supreme Security Committee, headed by the president, issued a statement listing 10 al-Qaida militants as top perpetrators of the attacks and vowed to bring “criminal, coward and terrorist elements to justice.”
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