[Al Arabiya Latest] Four Yemenis carrying hand grenades and guns who were arrested near the U.S. embassy in the capital Sanaa were passers-by and were not planning to target the building, an official said Wednesday. "The persons arrested near the American embassy ... were not intending to target it," a security source said on the ruling party website "September 26," adding they were merely passing through the area.
| On their way to a squirrel hunt, no doubt. Hence the grenades. |
An Interior Ministry statement on Tuesday said the four, aged between 20 and 33, had hand grenades, automatic weapons and ammunition. It did not say when they were arrested. The ministry said the four were residents of a town called Damaj in the northern province of Saada, where the government is battling a revolt by Shiite Muslims of the Zaydi sect.
Many Yemeni men insist on their traditional rights to bear arms and government attempts to criminalize unlicensed weapons and the carrying of guns in public have come to nothing.
Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen has targeted the U.S. Embassy in the past. In September 2008, gunmen backed by suicide bombers assaulted the walled compound in an attack that left 19 dead, including six attackers. Months before that, militants fired mortars at the embassy but missed, hitting a nearby school and killing one Yemeni. |