Explosions heard around US Embassy in Yemen (3:44 p.m.)
SAN’A, Yemen (AP) - Explosions and heavy gunfire were heard Wednesday morning in the vicinity of the US Embassy in the Yemeni capital and police swiftly cordoned off the area, according to a government security official.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, had no more details. An embassy employee contacted by telephone inside the mission’s compound in the eastern sector of San’a would only say that “there has been a security incident.”
Regional TV networks, however, are reporting a car bomb explosion outside the embassy and an exchange of gunfire between guards and unidentified assailants. Afire broke out in one of the embassy’s buildings, they say. The reports, which could not be independently confirmed, made no mention of casualties.
In March, three mortar rounds targeting the US Embassy crashed into a high school for girls next door, killing a Yemeni security guard and wounding more than a dozen girls.
The US Embassy in Yemen, which is the ancestral homeland of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, has been the focus of violence in the past.
In March 2002, a Yemeni man lobbed a sound grenade into the US embassy grounds a day after Vice President Dick Cheney made a stop for talks with officials at San’a airport. The attacker, who allegedly sought to retaliate against what he called American bias toward Israel, was sentenced to 10 years in prison but the sentence was later reduced to seven years.
In March 2003, two people were fatally shot and dozens more were injured when police clashed with demonstrators trying to storm the embassy when tens of thousands rallied against the US-led invasion of Iraq.
In 2006, a gunman opened fire outside the embassy but was shot and arrested by Yemeni guards. The gunman, armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, claimed he wanted to kill Americans.
Al-Qaida has an active presence in Yemen despite government efforts to destroy it. The group was blamed for the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole destroyer in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 American sailors and an attack on a French oil tanker that killed one person two years later.(AP)
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