Qaeda Operatives Killed In Yemen
SAN'A, Yemen Yemeni warplanes struck outside a desert village near the border with Saudi Arabia on Friday, killing six al Qaida operatives, including the group's top military leader in the country, security officials said. ambassador. counterterrorism aid and training, has intensified an offensive against an al Qaida offshoot that has dug in to pockets of the mountainous, impoverished nation, sometimes under the protection of powerful local tribes that have their own grievances with the weak government. missile strike there killed one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists, a man suspected in a deadly 1986 plane hijacking with a $5 million bounty on his head.
That Jan. 9 strike was part of the CIA led missile campaign against militant targets in Pakistan's insurgent riddled tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. was directly involved in Friday's strike in Yemen. The country's government, which depends in part on the support of powerful Islamic radicals to maintain its fragile hold on power, is deeply wary of being seen as too closely allied with Washington.
Four of those killed were on Yemen's list of most wanted al Qaida sale ugg boots cheap figures, including Qassim al Raimi, the top military chief in cheap ugg slippers sale the terrorist network's offshoot in Yemen. The attack took place near the village of Yatama, about 118 miles (190 kilometers) northeast of the capital, San'a.
Yemen has wrongly reported his death in the past. A written statement from the government's Supreme Security Committee said that this time it had intelligence that al Raimi was among those in two cars that were destroyed in the airstrike on the edge of Jouf province.
Jouf's provincial governor, Hussein Hazib, confirmed six al Qaida militants were killed in the strike, but said he did not yet know their identities.
Al Qaida's Yemen and Saudi operations merged a year ago to form al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, and al Raimi had been influential in strengthening the cheap ugg australia boots melbourne group.
"(Al Raimi) is really the individual who has done most for (al Qaida) in terms of rebuilding and reorganization," said Gregory Johnsen, an expert on Yemen at Princeton University.
"They don't miss a beat; they can overcome," he said. "This is an organization that has planned for these types of losses."
In 2005, al Raimi was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for plotting a bomb attack in the capital's diplomatic quarter and planning to assassinate the American ambassador. Neither plot was carried out.
Al Raimi escaped from prison in February of 2006 with 21 other militants who fled through a 200 yard tunnel that ended inside a mosque.
Also among the dead in Friday's strike was Ammar al Waeli, who was accused of involvement in a July 2007 suicide bombing that killed eight Spanish tourists and two Yemenis visiting a temple in central Yemen.
Al Waeli was also suspected of having a role kids uggs for cheap online in the kidnapping of a German family and a British cheap ugg australia boots china man who disappeared in June and have yet to be found.
The country on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula is beset by al Qaida attacks, a five year war between government forces and rebels in the north and a separatist movement in the once independent south. officials announced they were more than doubling the $67 million in counterterrorism aid they really cheap ugg boots fake gave to Yemen in 2009.
Yemen's Interior Ministry stressed Friday that while its cooperation with the United States included training and intelligence sharing, it would not open its doors to forces from America or any other nation. sends troops to fight al Qaida in Yemen.
President Barack Obama has said he uggs bailey button sale cheap does not plan to send American combat troops to Yemen. has been pursuing a similar strategy but one with a more direct military role. in Afghanistan.
The Jan. 9 missile strike killed Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim. The bailey button womens ugg cheap FBI's Web site lists him as a Palestinian with possible Lebanese citizenship. Three Pakistani officials called him an al Qaida member, but the FBI site says he was a member of the Abu Nidal Palestinian terrorist group.
Rahim is wanted for his alleged role in the Sept. 5, 1986, hijacking of a Pan American World Airways Flight during a stop in the uggs classic grey short cheap southern Pakistani city of Karachi, according to the FBI site.