Anti-Al Qaeda tribal leader survived assassination, bodyguard killed

By Nasser Arrabyee, 07/09/2012

A man was killed when Al Qaeda operatives failed to assassinate a tribal leader fighting against Al Qaeda in the southern province of Abyan, said local sources late Friday. 

Al Qaeda operatives made an ambush in the area of Moraib, between Shuqrah and Jaar but they failed to kill Abdul Latif AlSayed, the leader of anti-Al Qaeda popular committees. Al Qaeda operatives fired at the convoy of Al Sayed at the area of Moraib, and the bodyguards fired back and forced them to escape, the sources said.

One of the bodyguards was killed however, the sources said. The tribal leader Abdul Latif Al Sayed, who defected from Al Qaeda earlier this year, was not with the convoy. Al Sayed survived many assassinations after his  defection. Last August, Al Qaeda killed and injured more 100 people in a condolence meeting in his house in Jaar. 

Meanwhile, four Al Qaeda operatives were arrested in the Yemeni capital Sanaa after an assassination of a senior intelligence officer, according to statement published by the state-run media on Friday.

The four were arrested in Musaik and Sawan, two neighborhoods famous for harboring operatives of Al Qaeda at the eastern part of Sanaa.

The four were behind the assassination of the intelligence office Yahya Badi last Thursday 30 August, 2012.

Two you people, believed to be Al Qaeda operatives, shot Badi dead while getting out from his house in Habrah area at the eastern part of Sanaa. A lot of Al Qaeda operatives found safe haven in the capital Sanaa after they were driven out from their Emirates in Abyan last June.

Security sources said on Friday that two Syrians and one Iraqi were among those eight killed and injured in a US drone attack last Wednesday at Al Hashem village in Wadi Al Ain between Sauoyn and Mukalla of the eastern province of Hudhrmout.