Tuesday, April 24, 2012

FBI chief in Yemen as drone kills AlQaeda leader

- FBI director Robert Mueller visited Yemen on Tuesday, pledging to help quell an Islamist insurgency, as security and government sources said a drone had killed a prominent al Qaeda leader linked to an attack on a French oil tanker.

In a meeting with President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who took office earlier this year, Mueller promised the United States would support Yemen "with full force" in all respects.

"Mueller visits Yemen on an annual basis so this is not a special or secret occasion," said Mohammed Al-Basha, Yemen's embassy spokesman in Washington. "President Hadi emphasized that he is strongly committed to combating extremism and working with the U.S. to counter the mutual threat of terrorism."

Yemen's embassy in Washington said on Tuesday that Mohammed Saeed al-Umda, convicted in 2005 of involvement in the 2002 attack on the Limburg oil tanker, had been killed in an air strike on his convoy in the oil-producing province of Maarib on Sunday. It did not specify whether it was a U.S. strike.

Umda, described by the embassy as Yemen's fourth most-wanted man, had received military training under Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and was in charge of the group's finances, a security source said.

In Washington, U.S. officials indicated that there had been other similar air attacks recently against militant targets in Yemen. U.S. cooperation with Yemeni authorities on counter-terrorism issues appears to have improved somewhat since Hadi took over from long-time president Ali Abdullah Saleh earlier this year.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were aware of reports of al-Umda's death in such an attack but did not have final confirmation. U.S. sources indicated that the airstrike in which the Yemenis say he was killed was carried out by a missile fired from a CIA-operated drone aircraft.