US closes Yemen embassy after al Qaeda attack kills sixteen

Eight Yemeni soldiers, six assailants and 2 civilians were killed in an al Qaeda suicide car bombing, RPG rocket and shooting attack on the US embassy in Sanaa, Wednesday, Sept. 17. No embassy staff members were harmed in the five explosions reported by a US official.
The assailants dressed as soldiers drove up to the embassy gate in a Yemeni military vehicle and battled the guards for more than 20 minutes, fired rocket-propelled grenades which started a blaze in the heavily-fortified building and blew up two bomb cars.
debkafile‘s counter-terror sources disclose that Yemeni president Abdullah Salah, formerly a US partner in the war on terror, recently began working with al Qaeda to win their help for quelling plots by army dissidents to overthrow his regime and for beating back an Iran-backed Shiite rebellion.
Money and weapons handed out by circles close the president have strengthened al Qaeda’s freedom of action and presence in Yemen, Osama bin Laden’s ancestral home, especially in the Hadhramauth and northern regions close to the Saudi border of the country, which is strategically situated between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. .
In March, al Qaeda mounted a mortar attack which missed the US embassy but injured 13 girls at a nearby school, as well as others near the Italian mission and on Western tourists. Non-essential US staff were ordered to leave Yemen in April.