Morning Updates

Attacks on Yemen oil plants kill 5
By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer




Suicide bombers tried to strike two oil facilities in Yemen with explosives-packed cars, but authorities foiled the attacks and four bombers and a security guard were killed, the government said Friday.

The attempts came ahead of this week's presidential elections, in which President Ali Abdullah Saleh faces a serious challenge for the first time since he became head of state in 1978.

They also came days after al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, issued a videotaped threat of attacks on the Persian Gulf and on facilities he blamed for stealing Muslim oil.

Friday's attacks happened 35 minutes apart, targeting a Yemeni oil refinery in the northeast province of Mareb and a Canadian-Yemeni oil storage facility at the Dubba Port in Haramut province — scene of a 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg, an Interior Ministry statement said.

The statement said an investigation was under way to determine the identity of the "terrorist elements" behind the attacks.

Fourteen of 23 al-Qaida prisoners who escaped from jail in February remain still at large. The escape raised questions about Yemen's reliability in the fight against terrorism.

The Interior Ministry said the attacks would not stop Yemen from "continuing its persistent efforts to fight terrorism and the terrorist elements of darkness that are trying to undermine the security and stability of the country and its interests."

Yemen is the ancestral homeland of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and was the scene of the 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors.

In the first attack, two suicide bombers drove "at great speed" toward the Dubba Port at 5:15 a.m. in an attempt to blow up storage tanks containing a "huge amount" of oil, the ministry said.

The driver of the first car was wearing a uniform similar to those worn by staff at the facility, and the second driver was dressed in a military uniform, the statement said.

It said guards at the port "managed to blow up the rigged cars before they reached their targets."

Source

Security Watch Tower coverage