Yemen President urges clerics to help government fight Al Qaeda

By Nasser Arrabyee/29/08/2010
The Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh called upon religious scholars and all Yemenis for fighting Al Qaeda in his country.

“These terrorists have nothing to do with Islam and its tolerant values, so we all must fight them because they fight Allah and religion and the nation and development,” said Saleh on Saturday in a gathering of scholars and Quran students in Al Saleh grand mosque in Sana’a.
Saleh said that Al Qaeda in Yemen is trying to do the same way as in Afghanistan and Iraq in targeting the Yemeni security forces.

“Now these terrorists turn to target the security forces in the same way as it is in Afghanistan and Iraq but they will not succeed,” he said.

“The traders of drugs are from the terrorists , the politicians in the terrorist Al Qaeda organization allowed them to do business in drugs starting from Afghanistan to any place in the world.”
For its part, Al Qaeda which is in an open war with the security forces since the beginning of this year, claimed responsibility for several attacks on security forces and killing and injuring dozens of hem in Abyan province over the last few weeks.

Published in internet websites under the title “Al Qaeda operations in the State of Abyan”, the Al Qaeda attributed statement said, “ We would like to inform our Muslim brothers, who are oppressed by the apostate regime, of a number of operations carried out by Mujahideen of Al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsular in the State of Abyan, in the city of Zinjubar.”

The statement mentioned five operations only in Zinjubar city in which more than 15 soldiers were killed during the month of August .

Eight soldiers and a government official were killed on Saturday when Al Qaeda suspects attacked a security check point in Ja’ar, Abayan province .