Raid, airstrikes target alleged al-Qaida sites

SAN`A, Yemen – Yemeni forces, backed by airstrikes, killed at least 28 al-Qaida militants and captured 17 others Thursday in a pre-dawn assault on an alleged training camp and other areas in this Middle East nation, where al-Qaida’s presence is of growing concern to U.S. officials.

The operation targeted militants planning suicide bomb attacks against Yemeni and foreign sites, including schools, according to a statement on 26Sept.net, a Yemeni Web site linked to the government’s military. Several civilians were also apparently killed and homes destroyed, witnesses told local news agencies.

Yemen’s government is under pressure from the United States to step up efforts to dismantle al-Qaida’s network in this volatile country, the Arab world’s poorest. Thursday’s operation was one of the biggest counterterrorism efforts by the nation’s weak central government in recent memory.

It has been struggling with a civil war in the north, a secessionist movement in the south and a crumbling economy. In this void, al-Qaida has steadily grown, using the nation’s vast lawless, rugged terrain as a haven. U.S. officials are concerned that al-Qaida could use Yemen, strategically located in the heart of one of the world’s lucrative oil and shipping zones, as a launching pad for attacks against neighboring Saudi Arabia and in the Horn of Africa.

Mohammed Albasha, spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, said that the dead included Mohammed Saleh Al-Kazemi, a leading al-Qaida figure in Yemen.

President Barack Obama called Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to praise this country’s efforts to fight terrorism, saying Thursday’s raids “show Yemen’s determination to face the threat of Osama bin Laden’s global terrorist network of Al Qaeda,” according to Yemen’s Saba state news agency.

It was unclear what role the United States played in Thursday’s operations.