Airstrikes on Al Qaeda hideouts, suicide bomber arrested

By Nasser Arrabyee/05/09/2011

The Yemeni war planes carried out airstrikes against four Al Qaeda hideouts in Ja’ar city south of Yemen, said government sources on Monday.

A weapons store inside Al Razi hospital was destroyed, and another one destroyed inside Al Farook school, the prison inside the city, and police centre controlled by Al Qaeda in Shukra were also destroyed by the air strikes which were implemented on Monday afternoon, the sources said.

The government sources also said that an Al Qaeda suicide bomber was arrested in Lawdar on Monday before he implemented a suicide attack against the 111 brigade. He was arrested by the troops in cooperation with the loyal tribesmen, the sources said. The suicide bomber, 19, belongs to suicide cell which targeted the army and tribesmen fighting with the government against Al Qaeda, the sources said.

However, tribal sources said an anti-Al Qaeda tribal leader survived an assassination attempt by the suicide bomber who was arrested minutes before he implemented his operation.

The tribal leader Tawfik Al Junaidi, who recently formed a popular anti-Al Qaeda group of youth in the southern city of Lawdar, said that the suicide bomber was arrested in the local weapons market of Lawdar before he carried out the operation.

The suicide bomber, who is an Al Qaeda member, collected information about Tawfik Al Junaidi from local people in Lawdar who were deceiving him and informing the group of Al Junaidi.

“He came from Abyan to kill me, and we knew this from our people who gave him some information,” said Al Junaidi over phone from Lawdar.

“Now he is under investigation,” he added.

The suicide bomber is in his 20s and he his from the eastern province of Marib according to local source close to the investigators.

Al Junaidi said that he was survived two assassination attempts during last August. One in early August when Al Qaeda suspects put explosives under his car and the second was late August when he found the explosives close to his house in Lawdar.

Also late Monday, the government war planes hit a mosque and a hospital in Ja’ar killing at least 10 and more than 15 others, local sources said.

The sources said the war planes hit Al Haj Salem mosque, the grand mosque in Ja’ar, and they might have targeted a small mosque close to it where a group of Al Qaeda operatives were hiding.

For Al Razi hospital, it’s almost under the total control of Al Qaeda and it has foreign doctors cooperating with Al Qaeda including two Syrian nationals, the sources said.

The Ja’ar was declared an Islamic Emirates by Al Qaeda last April, one month before they declared Zinjubar as the second Islamic Emirates in the volatile southern province of Abyan.