Qaeda suspects kill top Yemen official

Pro-democracy protesters shout slogans during a demonstration in Sanaa yesterday, calling for Yemen’s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to make more decisions to complete the preparations for national dialogue and to demand that Yemen’s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh be put on trial.AFP/SannaSuspected Al Qaeda gunmen on a motorbike have shot dead a high-ranking security official in Yemen’s Dhammar province, south of Sanaa, the official Saba news agency reported yesterday. “Two gunmen on a motorbike opened gunfire on Colonel (Abdullah) al-Mushki killing him immediately,” Saba quoted a security official in Dhammar as saying about Wednesday’s shooting. “Security services are carrying out vast investigations to hunt down the criminals behind this crime which carries the fingerprints of Al Qaeda,” said Saba. Such hit-and-run shootings have killed dozens of security officers last year, prompting authorities early in January to impound illegal motorbikes. The interior ministry said that 40 members of the security forces and four civilians were killed in 2012 in hit-and-run shootings by gunmen on motorbikes. There are over 200,000 motorbikes across Yemen, most of which are unregistered, according to Sanaa police. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, blamed for most of the killings, has not claimed responsibility for any of the assassinations. AQAP took advantage of the weakness of Yemen’s central government during an uprising in 2011 against now-ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh, seizing large swathes of territory across the south. But a month-long government offensive that ended in June pushed most of the militants to the more lawless desert regions of the east. Separately, security officials told AFP yesterday that two Finns and an Austrian kidnapped in Yemen nearly a month ago are being held by Al Qaeda-linked tribesmen in the network’s eastern stronghold of Marib.The trio were abducted in Sanaa on December 21 by tribesmen with grievances over land seized from them in the capital and were initially held in Khawlan, a mountainous area 80km southeast of Sanaa. Security officials said yesterday the kidnappers “are tribesmen linked to Al Qaeda” who have taken the hostages to Marib province. The kidnappers have also widened their demands, calling for authorities to “free Al Qaeda leaders jailed in Sanaa and a ransom to release their hostages,” one tribal source said. On Wednesday, Interior Minister Abdelqader Qahtan received envoy Jarno Syrjala from Finland, which has no diplomatic representation in Yemen. The minister assured Syrjala that “efforts are ongoing to free the hostages without endangering their lives,” according to state news agency Saba. The Austrian man and a Finnish man and woman were abducted as they prepared to travel to the southern port of Aden via second city Taez. The two men were learning Arabic in Sanaa, and the woman had recently arrived on a visit. Most kidnappings of foreigners are carried out by members of the country’s powerful tribes who use them as bargaining chips in disputes with the central government. Hundreds of people have been abducted in Yemen over the past 15 years. Almost all have been freed unharmed.