US, UK shut Yemen embassies

AP

EMBASSIES CLOSED: Both the US and British embassies in Yemen have been shut after al Queda threats.

Attack fears close Yemen embassies

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The US and Britain have closed their embassies in Yemen in the face of al Qaeda threats, after both countries announced an increase in aid to the government to fight the terror group linked to the failed attempt to bomb a US airliner on Christmas Day.

The confrontation with al Qaeda's offshoot in Yemen has gained new urgency since the 23-year-old Nigerian accused in the attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, told American investigators he received training and instructions from the group's operatives in Yemen.

US President Barack Obama said on Saturday that the al Qaeda offshoot was behind the attempt.

White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said the American Embassy, which was attacked twice in 2008, was shut on Sunday because of "indications al Qaeda is planning to carry out an attack against a target inside of San'a, possibly our embassy."

"We're not going to take any chances" with the lives of embassy personnel, Brennan said. A statement on the embassy's website announcing the closure did not say how long it would remain closed.

In London, Britain's Foreign Office said its embassy was closed for security reasons. It said officials would decide later whether to reopen it on Monday.

The closure comes as Washington is dramatically stepping up aid to Yemen to fight al Qaeda, which has built up strongholds in remote parts of the impoverished, mountainous nation where government control outside the capital is weak.

Over the weekend, General David Petraeus, the US general who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, announced that Washington this year will more than double the US$67 million in counterterrorism aid that it provided Yemen in 2009.

On Saturday, Petraeus met with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to discuss coordination in the fight against al-Qaida.

Britain announced on Sunday that Washington and London will fund a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen. Britain will also host a high-level international conference on January 28 to come up with an international strategy to counter radicalisation in Yemen.

The US also provided intelligence and other help to back two Yemeni air and ground assaults on al Qaeda hide-outs last month, reported to have killed more than 60 people. Yemeni authorities said more than 30 suspected militants were among the dead.

The US has increasingly provided intelligence, surveillance and training to Yemeni forces during the past year, and has provided some firepower, a senior US defence official has said.

Some of that assistance may be through the expanded use of unmanned drones, and the US is providing funding to Yemen for helicopters and other equipment. Officials, however, say there are no US ground forces or fighter aircraft in Yemen.

On Thursday, the embassy sent a notice to Americans in Yemen urging them to be vigilant about security.

Yemeni security officials said over the weekend that the country had deployed several hundred extra troops to Marib and Jouf, two mountainous eastern provinces that are al Qaeda's main strongholds in the country and where Abdulmutallab may have visited.

US and Yemeni investigators have been trying to track Abdulmutallab's steps in Yemen, which he visited from August until December 7. He was there ostensibly to study Arabic in San'a, but he disappeared for much of that time.

Yemeni media also reported that the coast guard was increasing patrols to stop any incoming militants after an al Qaeda-linked insurgent group in Somalia, al-Shabab, claimed last week that it would send its fighters to help the terror group's offshoot there.

Al Qaeda fighters have dramatically increased their presence in Yemen over the past year, taking advantage of the San'a government's weak control over much of the country.

Tribes hold sway over large areas, and many of them are discontented with the central government and have given refuge to al Qaeda fighters, both Yemenis and other Arabs coming from Saudi Arabia or war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, was the scene of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and in the years after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, the Yemeni government worked with Washington to crack down on al Qaeda figures on its soil.

- AP