US military evacuates embassy personnel from Yemen

WASHINGTON — The US military evacuated non-essential US government personnel from Yemen on yesterday due to the high risk of attack by al-Qaida that has triggered temporary shutdowns of 19 American diplomatic posts across the Middle East and Africa.

The State Department said in a travel warning that it ordered the evacuation "due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks" and said US citizens in Yemen should leave immediately because of an "extremely high" security threat level.

"As staff levels at the Embassy are restricted, our ability to assist US citizens in an emergency and provide routine consular services remains limited and may be further constrained by the fluid security situation," the travel warning said. The US Embassy is located in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen.

Yemeni security officials said a suspected US drone strike at about 2 a.m. local time yesterday killed four alleged al-Qaida members in a volatile eastern province of the country. The drone fired a missile at a car carrying the four men, setting it on fire and killing all of them, the officials said. It wasn't immediately clear if the decision to evacuate the embassy, made earlier, was connected to the drone strike.

The Yemeni officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to talk to the media, said they believe one of the dead is Saleh Jouti, a senior al-Qaida member. It's the fourth drone attack in the past two weeks to hit a car believed to be carrying al-Qaida members.

Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said the US Air Force transported State Department personnel out of Sanaa early yesterday. "The US Department of Defense continues to have personnel on the ground in Yemen to support the US State Department and monitor the security situation," Little added.

A senior defense official said yesterday that between 50 and 100 diplomatic personnel were flown out of Sanaa in a C-17 military transport as dawn broke and were taken to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The official was not authorized to discuss the information publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said dozens of military troops remain in the country, including those who were doing security at the embassy and others conducting training with Yemeni troops.

Britain's Foreign Office also announced that it had evacuated all staff from its embassy in Yemen due to security concerns. The office said the British embassy staff were "temporarily withdrawn to the U.K." on yesterday, but declined further comment. Previously, the U.K. had said the embassy would be closed until the end of the Muslim festival of Eid later this week.

A US intelligence official and a Mideast diplomat told The Associated Press that the current shutdown of embassies in the Middle East and Africa was instigated by an intercepted secret message between al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri and Nasser al-Wahishi, the leader of the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, about plans for a major terror attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The State Department on Sunday closed a total of 19 diplomatic posts until next Saturday. They include posts in Bangladesh and across North Africa and the Middle East as well as East Africa, including Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda and Mauritius.

Jen Psaki, spokeswoman for the State Department, said in a separate statement issued early yesterday that the department issued the order for Yemen because of concern about a "threat stream indicating the potential for terrorist attacks against US persons or facilities overseas, especially emanating from the Arabian Peninsula."

The statement said US citizens who choose to stay in Yemen despite the travel warning should limit nonessential travel within the country and make their own contingency emergency plans.

AQAP, gathered in small cells scattered across Yemen's vast under-governed regions, has proven to be a tenacious enemy.

Officials say al-Zawahri, who took over for Osama bin Laden and works from Pakistan, has reached out to the Yemeni branch, cementing their ties and further signaling the AQAP is once again looking to target US and Western interests after a sustained period of more local and regional focus.

For puzzled Americans who've been told that al-Qaida is on the decline, the latest warnings raise questions about how successful America's war on terror has been and whether the terror group has been able to reorganize and reconstitute itself since bin Laden's death in May 2011.

And, although US officials agreed a year ago to restart military aid to Yemen, it's unclear how much of the new aircraft and weapons have arrived. After aid to Yemen was frozen for some time, the US military is once again on the ground there training Yemeni special operations forces and has delivered more than a dozen helicopters to the Yemeni military and provided training for them, US defense officials said.

But other weapons and equipment are still in the pipeline, according to a Mideast official.

The latest terror alert was triggered in part when the secret message between al-Zawahri and al-Wahishi was intercepted several weeks ago.

There long has been movement of fighters between Pakistan and Yemen, and discussions between the two groups, but the latest communication triggered worries and prompted the US to take steps to boost security. The embassy closures came one day after a meeting between President Barack Obama and Yemeni President Abdo Rabu Mansour Hadi.

AQAP has been widely considered al-Qaida's most dangerous affiliate for several years. Even though the group lost Anwar al-Awlaki — one of its key inspirational leaders — to a US drone strike in 2011, al-Wahishi and the group's master bomb maker, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, remain on the loose and determined to target the US and other Western interests.

The group is linked to the botched Christmas Day 2009 bombing of an airliner bound for Detroit and explosives-laden parcels intercepted aboard cargo flights a year later — both incidents involving al-Asiri's expertise.

In recent years, however, AQAP has been focused more on making gains at home, taking advantage of an unstable government and overstretched military that was forced to concentrate on protecting the political center in Sanaa. As a result, said a senior defense official, AQAP was able to expand its foothold in the south, capture more weapons and gain control of additional territory.