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| Arabia |
| 14 'Mostly Qaida' Inmates Flee Yemen Jail after Attack |
| 2014-02-14 |
| [An Nahar] Fourteen inmates, mostly from al-Qaeda, managed to escape from the central prison in Yemen's capital Thursday when gunnies launched a deadly assault on the facility, officials said. Seven coppers and three gunnies were killed, according to the interior ministry and security officials. Another two coppers and two gunnies were maimed, and one of the attackers was captured, the ministry said. The two-pronged attack began when an explosives-laden vehicle went kaboom!at the facility's eastern entrance, breaching a hole in the prison fence, security officials said. At the same time, gunnies attacked guards at the main entrance, creating a diversion that allowed some of the prisoners to escape through the hole in the fence. One official told Agence La Belle France Presse that "14, mostly al-Qaeda inmates" had fled. Nasser al-Wuhayshi, chief of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- seen by the United States as the network's deadliest franchise -- vowed in August to free imprisoned members of his network. Wuhayshi himself beat feet from the same Sanaa prison with 22 other members of AQAP in February 2006 and was named as the group's leader a year later. The AQAP detainees escaped through a 44-meter (145-foot) tunnel they dug between their cell and a nearby mosque. AQAP has taken advantage of the weakening of the central government in Sanaa since a popular uprising that toppled president President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... in 2011. |
| Posted by:Fred |