Yemen bomb kills Spanish tourists

 

At least nine people have been killed after a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into a tourist convoy in Yemen. Seven Spanish tourists and at least two Yemenis died in the blast at the Queen of Sheba temple in Marib. About seven others were injured in the attack which the Spanish foreign minister said he “totally condemned”.

Yemen has faced continuing unrest in recent years, which the government often blames on al-Qaeda operatives. An interior ministry official was quoted by the country’s state news agency as saying that the attack appeared to have been carried out by al-Qaeda. “Preliminary information indicates that the al-Qaeda organisation is behind the cowardly attack,” the official told the Saba news agency.

Witnesses said a vehicle entered a gate at the site, known in Yemen by its Arabic name Balqis, before it ploughed into the convoy of tourist cars and exploded. The victims were reported to belong to a group of around 14 Spanish tourists visiting the site, some 170km (110 miles) east of the capital, Sanaa.

 Witnesses said the bomb went off at around 1800 (1500 GMT) on Monday as the visitors were finishing a tour of the temple, built 3,000 years ago at the time of the Queen of Sheba. In recent year’s Yemen’s government has been fighting Islamists with the help of US special forces based in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa. Al-Qaeda has demanded the release of militants jailed in the country.

Attacks in Yemen:

1.  October 2000: Seventeen US sailors die in suicide attack on USS Cole in Yemeni port
2. October 2002: A similar attack against French tanker the Limburg kills one Bulgarian and wounds 12 others
3. March 2003: A Canadian is killed and another wounded after a Yemeni gunman opens fire at an oilfield east of Sanaa
4. September2006: Four bombers and a security guard die when Yemeni security forces foil suicide attacks against two oil refineries

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Yemen bomb kills Spanish tourists

As I have posted in the Spanish blog, the two Yemenis dead are the guide and the interpretor.

The others are wounded but only one of them is in the Intensive Care Unit, a woman in her thirties.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the authorities have blaimed it on Al Qaeda, whose leader, Bin Laden has Yemeni origins.

Spanish FM Moratinos has maintained constant contact with the Yemeni Foreign Viceminister who has given him the terrorist attack’s data and the condolences of the Yemeni people.

Judge Fernando Andreu (Instruction Judge nº4 of the National Court) has begun an investigation into the case.

Foreign Affairs Ministry has recommended “extreme caution” to tourists travelling abroad.

Spanish newspaper ABC.es writes:

In its slow progress through times, the Yemeni Republic has rigin laws. Their women maintain the most strict black clothing, which covers them all the face but their eyes [Note: that is called “niqab”] and its legislations includes the death punishment for homosexuals.

Yes, it is certainly an slow progress.

Anyway, we have to see the profound joke this means for Spanish Government. It is not Iraq, it is not Afghanistan, it is not … It is just ourselves, our history, our own past and present what makes us be the targets. Till Europe, US, Australia, etc. do not take into account that this is not of what we do, but what we are, the measures Government will take, will not be sufficient or will be directly incorrect. And people will continue dying. And the terrorists will continue their horror campaign.

Ahmadinejad turns down chance to star in Oliver Stone film

 Wow, what a pity for humanity.

His thirst for the limelight has driven him to launch a multilingual blog and issue a string of headline-grabbing statements. But Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was surprisingly camera-shy when his extrovert persona drew the attention of Hollywood, turning down a request by Oliver Stone, the director of JFK, Nixon and Platoon, to make a documentary film about him. He dismissed the American film-maker as “part of the Great Satan”, the Iranian regime’s standard term of abuse for the US.

Ahmadinejad turns down chance to star in Oliver Stone film | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

 

Stone is going to be so dull and unhappy after he is called “part of the great Satan“.

Two more held over bomb attacks

Detectives investigating the failed car bombings at Glasgow airport and in London have arrested two more men, Strathclyde Police have said. The arrests of the men, aged 25 and 28, take the number of people held over the attempted bombings to seven.

Houses are being searched in Houston, near Paisley, Merseyside, and in Staffordshire, where one of two doctors arrested in the inquiry lived. Police are linking the failed bombings and the UK remains on high alert. Police said the arrests of the two men, who are not believed to be of Scottish origin, were as a result of “intensive police operations in the Paisley area last night”.

Assistant Chief Constable John Malcolm, of Strathclyde Police said: “This continues to be a fast-moving investigation and I am grateful to the public for their perseverance and support during these difficult times. He added: “I would continue to urge people to be vigilant.”

On Monday, Staffordshire Police closed off Priam Close, in Bradwell, not far from Chesterton, where one of the people being held, Dr Mohammed Asha, lived. Dr Asha, who worked as a junior doctor at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, was arrested on the M6 in Cheshire on Saturday night.

BBC NEWS | UK | Two more held over bomb attacks

From CNN:

Authorities suspect the two men who rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into Glasgow’s airport on Saturday are the same people who parked two car bombs in central London a day earlier, security sources told CNN.

British police said on Monday they had arrested two more people as part of their investigation into the failed terror attacks that have put the country on its highest state of alert.

The two were arrested in the Paisley area of Glasgow, police said. The men were aged 28 and 25 and believed not to be of Scottish origin. That brings the total number of people arrested to seven.

Other than one suspect who was severely burned, no one was seriously hurt in Saturday’s incident at Glasgow. The car bombs in London did not detonate.

Police investigating the car bombs in London were tracking the two men even before the attack in Scotland, sources told CNN.

It is certainly very less likely that they are of Scottish origin, and even less possible they are Buddhists on a rampage campaign…

Doctors probed over failed bombings
Guardian Unlimited – 25 minutes ago
Two of the people being quizzed by police over the failed car bombings in London and Glasgow are believed to be doctors. One of them is Dr Mohammed Asha, 26, of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, who was arrested on the M6 in Cheshire.

The second doctor is thought to have been one of the two men who drove a blazing Jeep packed with gas canisters into a terminal building at Glasgow Airport.

He was seen wearing a stethoscope at his rented home in the village of Houston, near Glasgow Airport, letting agent Daniel Gardiner said.

It is believed the doctor worked at Paisley’s Royal Alexandra Hospital.

One of the two men is now under armed guard in a critical condition at the hospital after suffering terrible burns in the attack.

Police carried out a controlled explosion on a vehicle in the car park of the hospital. Strathclyde Police said the car was connected to the airport attack.

Suspect on run as US says Glasgow was known target Scotsman
Doctor among terror cell arrests Times Online
BBC News – Cambridge Evening News – Forbes – ABC Online
all 3,762 news articles »

Two more arrests over British terror alert UPDATE
Forbes – 38 minutes ago
GLASGOW (Thomson Financial) – Police investigating a weekend car bomb attack at Glasgow airport have arrested two more people, according to a police spokesman.
Britain at maximum alert Canada.com
Britain fears new attack Independent Online

Amid fears of a new Al-Qaeda-style attack, the goverment also called a new meeting of its so-called COBRA crisis cell, the fifth in four days, to discuss the latest developments.

Reuters.uk – Seattle Times – Bloomberg – Reuters
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Seven suspects detained over British plot: Brown has said he believes those behind the botched attacks were associated with militant group al Qaeda. No, Al-Reuters, they are not militants, they are nurses spreading the love around the world.

Time: How secure is Britain?

Yet if the terrorists who targeted Glasgow and London lacked the technical and planning skills to succeed, any hopes that their attacks were the work of crazed individuals have evaporated. Instead, a picture is emerging of a well-coordinated operation stretching from Scotland to southern England — with the hallmarks of a plot inspired by al-Qaeda. It has also revealed the manpower limitations of the country’s electronic surveillance system. David Capitanbchik, a terrorism expert at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, also suggests the attack in Glasgow may be in response to last week’s elevation to the post of Prime Minister of Gordon Brown, who is a Scot and from Glasgow, and is a wake-up call to Scotland which has traditionally seen itself as immune to terrorism, a view based in part on strong historical ties with Northern Ireland during the height of Britain’s conflict with the IRA. Yesterday’s attack, on the first day of the Scottish school holidays and possibly timed to coincide with the Queen’s official opening of the Scottish parliament shows that “Scotland has to be as much on alert as the rest of the UK,” he said.

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