Yemen minister escapes assassination bid

Yemen’s newly appointed Information Minister Ali Ahmed al-Amrani escaped an assassination attempt yesterday as he was leaving government headquarters in Sanaa, a government official told AFP.
“Three bullets targetted Amrani’s car as he left the government headquarters following a cabinet meeting,” the official told AFP, requesting anonymity.
The minister, a member of the opposition named to the post in December as part of a deal that saw President Ali Abdullah Saleh hand over power to his deputy, was unhurt.
Air raids struck Al-Qaeda elements in southern Yemen overnight and killed 15 people, including a long-hunted militant leader, tribal chiefs said, adding that extremists responded by killing two soldiers yesterday.
The four Monday night raids were “carried out by US planes,” according to a local military official who spoke on condition of anonymity. They hit targets in the Loder and Al-Wadih areas of Abyan province, a tribal chief said.
Al-Qaeda militants control much of the province after taking advantage of months of political turmoil, which has forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh to agree to step down next month, to overrun swathes of the south.
“We think they were carried out by American planes,” a tribal chief said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Three of the raids targeted a school in which Al-Qaeda fighters and chiefs of a local militant network were meeting around midnight, the sources said.
Around a dozen people were killed, among them regional Al-Qaeda leader Abdul Monem al-Fathani, who has long been sought by the Yemeni authorities, they said.
The fourth strike hit an Al-Qaeda control post, killing three more people, they said.
“All those killed are Al-Qaeda militants,” a tribal chief said.
Witnesses told AFP they saw “charred” bodies of al-Qaeda militants taken out of the school.
Twelve wounded members of the extremist network were also taken to two hospitals in the area, the same sources said.
Hours later, Al-Qaeda militants killed two soldiers on the outskirts of Rada, 130 kilometres (80 miles) southeast of Sanaa. The town was seized by more than 1,000 Al-Qaeda fighters and held for nine days in mid-January in what was seen as a significant advance towards the capital.
The southern Arabian Peninsula country is the ancestral homeland of Al-Qaeda’s late founder Osama bin Laden, who was killed in May in a US raid in Pakistan.