Al-Qaeda claim attack on Yemeni oil facilities

Al-Qaeda’s wing in Yemen calling themselves the Yemen Soldiers Brigade claimed to have carried out attacks on a French oil pipeline and a Chinese oilfield last week in Yemen, websites linked to fundamentalist Islam said last Monday. 

The group claimed it had detonated a timed explosive last Thursday on a pipeline belonging to France’s Total group in the western Saah district, the SITE Intelligence Group reported.

Conversely, an official in Yemen’s Oil Ministry confirmed that an incident did occur at the pipeline last Thursday, but that it was merely a damaging “technical fault,” and not a terrorist attack as had been reported.

In a video statement posted on an Islamist militant website, the group also said it fired mortars on Saturday at an oilfield owned by an unidentified Chinese firm in the eastern district of Hadramout.

“Both these operations are stated as means of support against the enemy,” SITE reported, adding that the authenticity of the message could not be verified. In a similar statement on the internet last week, the militant group said it had targeted the US embassy in Sana’a in an attack on March 18 that hit a nearby school in Sana’a.

A schoolgirl and a policeman were killed and 17 other people wounded in the attack, which some US sources alleged had targeted the US embassy. The video, which lasts 13 minutes, also celebrates the death of Yemeni al-Qaeda leader, Fouz al-Rabiea who was killed in a clash with police near the capital Sana’a in October 2006. 

Al-Rabiea was condemned to death in 2004 for having carried out attacks on oil pipelines in Yemen in 2002 and for having killed a soldier in the province of Abyan.  The video released on Monday also showed footage of an attack carried out by al-Rabiea on an oil pipeline in the country.  The video begins with the words used in a previous audio message by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, which was dedicated to Yemen.

In that message, bin Laden fiercely attacked Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh, accusing him of being an American ally. 

It also attacked other religious leaders such as the well-known judge Hamud al-Hitar, who had been assigned to conduct theological dialogue with al-Qaeda fighters in Yemen’s jails. 

The video by the Yemen Soldiers Brigade concluded with a statement by a suicide-bomber from Sana’a, Abu Miqdad, who was seen standing between a Kalashnikov rifle and grenade launcher. Miqdad said that he was ready to sacrifice himself for Osama bin Laden. 

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