Didn’t Obama claim al-Qaeda was “on the path to defeat?”
Via LA Times:
In a strike that bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda, assailants in military uniforms staged a brazen daytime assault Thursday on Yemen’s defense ministry, setting off a daylong battle that killed at least four dozen people and left scores injured, with some foreigners believed to be among the dead.
The attack, which terrorized residents of a crowded district in the capital’s old city, began with a thunderous car-bomb blast at the compound’s gate, and a separate push by fighters on foot and armed with assault weapons. Their target was a hospital within the ministry complex where some foreign aid workers were based. A Supreme Court judge and his wife were reported to have been killed.
Officials said the attackers wore military garb, apparently stolen, which fueled confusion among those trying to defend the ministry, which is the headquarters of Yemen’s military. The assailants also may have used stolen government license plates on their vehicles, officials said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the early morning attack, but officials said the complex nature of the assault prompted them to suspect Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the organization’s most dangerous offshoots. Its leaders and fighters have been the frequent targets of U.S. drone attacks.
Via LWJ:
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula killed more than 30 people in a suicide assault that targeted Yemen’s Ministry of Defense complex in the capital of Sana’a. The attack is the latest in a series of suicide assaults in Yemen that have targeted security forces.
Today’s attack began when a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives at the outer wall of the complex near a hospital, according to Reuters. Then, a second car filled with heavily armed AQAP fighters dressed in military uniforms entered the breach in the wall and opened fire.
The AQAP fighters then “broke into three departments of the ministry, and exchanged gunfire with the soldiers,” Xinhua reported. AQAP fighters are said to have “pulled at least two foreign employees, a Western doctor and a Filipina nurse, into the hospital courtyard and shot them dead in front of local staff,” Reuters reported.