Yemen launched an operation on Tuesday to arrest a Saudi bomb maker accused of being behind a foiled bomb plot involving US-bound parcels and suspected al Qaeda fighters blew up an oil pipeline, apparently in response. Yemen's military, under international pressure to find the bomb maker, deployed to the south of the country, where the insurgents attacked the pipeline operated by the Korean National Oil Corporation. It was not clear if exports would be affected.
"This is one of the things we should expect because al Qaeda wants to give the message to the Yemeni government that military escalation does not mean that al Qaeda will remain silent now - that they will react and escalate," Ibrahim Sharqieh, Deputy Director at Brookings Institute's Doha Center, told Reuters.
The aim of the military operation in the provinces of Maarib and Shabwa, where oil and gas fields of major international companies are located, was to capture suspected bomb maker Ibrahim al-Asiri, a Yemeni security official said. The attack on the pipeline was in Shabwa. The mission is also to catch the US-born radical preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who is wanted by Washington.
"They want to underline their sincerity in fighting al Qaeda. They're in the spotlight again and they want to show they're dealing with the issue," Nicole Stracke at the Gulf Research Centre said. Yemeni authorities also began the trial in absentia of al-Awlaki, who has been linked to the failed bombing of a US-bound plane in December 2009 that was claimed by Yemen's al Qaeda wing and who is thought to be in southern Yemen. The US Treasury has blacklisted Awlaki as a "specially designated global terrorist". Earlier this year, the United States authorised the CIA to capture or kill him. The two parcel bombs were intercepted last week on cargo planes in Britain and Dubai and are thought to be the work of al Qaeda's Yemen-based arm, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), US officials say.
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