ADEN: Six suspected Al Qaeda fighters, six soldiers and a civilian woman were killed in a series of militant attacks in the eastern Yemeni city of Seiyun yesterday, local officials said.
A suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden car into the entrance of an army base, killing four soldiers in the city in Hadramawt province — a territory with some of the country’s dwindling oil reserves. Another militant was killed in clashes that followed.
At around the same time, four militants and two soldiers were killed in a raid on the city’s airport before forces regained control of the facility. The assault took place as a Yemen Airways plane landed, a military official said. Troops scrambled armoured vehicles to confront the militants and evacuate the flight’s passengers in army buses through the northern gate of the airport, the official said. A civilian woman was also killed in an attack at a nearby agricultural plant.
Jordan court acquits radical cleric
AMMAN: A Jordanian court yesterday acquitted radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada, who was extradited from Britain last year, of charges of conspiring to commit acts of terrorism.
But authorities will continue to detain the preacher because of separate charges related to a plot to attack tourists during Jordan’s New Year celebrations in 2000.
Abu Qatada had previously been sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court to life imprisonment for conspiracy to carry out Al Qaeda-style attacks against US and other targets in US ally Jordan.
Yesterday’s session was a retrial in which the prosecution had argued Abu Qatada was a mentor to militant cells in Jordan while he was in Britain. But the court quashed the conspiracy charges and postponed another hearing on the New Year plot charges until September 7.
Beirut suicide bomber was a Saudi
RIYADH: A suicide bomber who blew himself when police raided his hotel room in Beirut was a Saudi wanted by authorities in the kingdom, an informed source in Riyadh said yesterday. An accomplice who survived the blast was also a Saudi, according to Lebanese authorities.
“His name is Abdul Rahman Nasser Al Shenifi, 20, and he was wanted by the interior ministry,” the source said. But the bomber did not figure on the kingdom’s list of most-wanted militants, the source close to security authorities added.
The raid followed the arrest on Friday in a hotel in the nearby Hamra district of the capital of a Frenchman of Comoran origin on suspicion of plotting to carry out suicide bombings in Lebanon on behalf of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Jailed Jazeera reporter’s gesture
CAIRO: An Al Jazeera journalist whose jailing triggered global outrage has donated 15,000 Egyptian pounds to a fund initiated by the president to boost Egypt’s ailing economy, his brother said yesterday.
Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, who was sentenced to seven years in jail along with two other Al Jazeera journalists for allegedly aiding the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood, made the donation to Tahya Misr (Long Live Egypt), an initiative of President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.
“When we visited the prison yesterday (Wednesday), Mohamed told us to donate 15,000 pounds (about $2,000) to this fund,” Adel Fadel Fahmy said as he made the donation at a bank.
“Mohamed has always been patriotic and feels that the Egyptian economy needs support.”
When asked whether the donation was aimed at securing a pardon from the president for his brother, Adel said: “It is not linked... He (Mohamed) wants to distinguish between his love for Egypt and his disappointment and anger over the verdict.”
“As a family, we don’t expect this small donation to secure a pardon for him. These are two separate issues.”
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