SANA, Yemen — A suicide bomber who blew himself up at a military parade rehearsal Monday in Yemen’s capital killed 96 soldiers in one of the deadliest attacks in the city in years, officials said.
The Yemen branch of al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the attack on the drill, a rehearsal for a parade for the celebration of Yemen’s National Day today.
The al-Qaida group had targeted the minister of defense, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Nasser Ahmed, it announced in an e-mailed statement. Ahmed had arrived at the heavily secured city square to greet the assembled troops just minutes before the blast ripped through the area.
“This is only the beginning of Jihad,” al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula vowed, threatening that its militants will continue attacks on the Yemeni leadership.
The bombing was retaliation for the government’s military offensive in a swath of southern Yemen that the militant movement seized last year, it said.
A statement in the name of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi read on state TV said: “The war on terrorism will continue until we win, whatever the sacrifices are.” The United States, increasingly concerned about the militants’ widening influence in Yemen, has stepped up drone strikes and military aid.
The Pentagon also confirmed that three civilian contractors helping train Yemen’s coast guard were attacked Sunday in Yemen. Their injuries were minor, said Cmdr. Bill Speaks, a Defense Department spokesman.
Militants in another vehicle shot at the three on Sunday as they traveled in a car in the Red Sea port city of Hodeida.
Yemeni officials initially said the three were members of the U.S. Coast Guard, but the Coast Guard denied that.
The suicide bomber in Sana was a soldier taking part in Monday’s drill, lining up with fellow troops at a main square in the capital near the presidential palace, military officials said.
He belonged to the Central Security, a paramilitary force under the command of ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s nephew Yahia, the officials said.
Hadi has been trying to wrest control of the security forces away from Saleh, who is still seen as exercising much influence from behind the scenes.
The attacker walked from the western part of Saba’een Square, dressed in military clothes, and detonated a suicide belt just before the defense minister and his immediate subordinates had been expected to greet the troops, witnesses said.
Scores of bleeding soldiers lay on the ground as ambulances rushed to the scene.
“This is a real massacre,” said Ahmed Sobhi, one of the soldiers who witnessed the explosion. “There are piles of torn body parts, limbs and heads. This is unbelievable. I am still shaking. The place turned into hell.”
Soldiers hand-picked by their commanders from different branches of the military have been drilling for the parade for a week, Sobhi said, evidence that the attacker was a soldier and not an infiltrator.
The site of the attack had been sealed off by Republican Guard forces for the previous 24 hours in preparation for the National Day celebrations. No cars or pedestrians were allowed to enter. The Republican Guard is led by Saleh’s son and one-time heir apparent, Ahmed.
Khaled Ali, another soldier, told The Associated Press over the phone from the site of the attack that the explosion was followed by heavy gunfire.
“In the mayhem, we were all running in all directions. I saw the guards of the minister surrounding him and forming a human cordon. They were firing in the air,” he said.
Descriptions of the parade-ground attack bore a resemblance to attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan, where insurgents or disgruntled soldiers have used army uniforms as camouflage to infiltrate the ranks of their unsuspecting targets.
Shortly after the attack, Hadi demoted two of Saleh’s relatives from their top positions in the Central Security forces and the interior ministry. A new commander, Fadl al-Qousi, was appointed top commander of Central Security forces, senior to Saleh’s nephew, Yahia. Another Saleh in-law, Mohammed al-Qousi, lost his post as commander of a police force.
Officials are still investigating.
Saleh stepped down in February as part of a U.S.-backed power-transfer deal brokered by Gulf Arab countries and aimed at ending political unrest in the country. It gave Saleh immunity from prosecution in return for relinquishing his power.
Since then Hadi has pledged to restructure the army and purge it of Saleh’s family members and loyalists suspected of hindering reforms.
“We are speeding up the restructuring of the army to bring back stability to the country which was on a brink of all-out war,” the president’s statement said. “Yemen can’t bear more crises.”
Hadi has also vowed to step up the fight against al-Qaida, which expanded its foothold after exploiting the political and security turmoil in the wake of the uprising against Saleh.
Since the start of the revolt, inspired by other Arab Spring uprisings, al-Qaida militants overran large swaths of territory, and several towns and cities in the south, pushing out government forces and establishing their own rule.
In recent weeks, the army has launched a concerted effort to uproot the militants from their strongholds - and is closely coordinating with a small contingent of U.S. troops who are helping guide the operations from inside Yemen.
CLERIC’S FUNERAL
Elsewhere in the region, mourners fired bullets into the air as thousands poured into the streets Monday in northern Lebanon for the funeral of a Sunni Muslim cleric, whose killing sparked intense clashes in Beirut and raised fears that the crisis in Syria was spilling across the border.
The Beirut street battles overnight killed at least two people and wounded 15, and were the most serious clashes in Lebanon’s capital in four years. The streets were calmer by Monday morning but some shops remained closed and many parents kept children home from school.
The violence in Beirut’s predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Tariq Jadidah broke out hours after Sheik Ahmed Abdul-Wahid and his bodyguard were shot dead at a checkpoint in northern Lebanon. Abdul-Wahid was an anti-Syrian cleric.
Authorities braced for the possibility of more violence Monday in the north, where Abdul-Wahid was to be buried. Gunmen carrying automatic rifles shouted for the downfall of the Syrian regime in the cleric’s hometown of Bireh.
The bloodshed in Syria, where President Bashar Assad’s regime is cracking down on an uprising, has been fueling violence across the border.
LIBYA EX-SPY CHIEF INDICTED
The man who ran Libya’s extensive spy network and was considered one of the closest confidants of former leader Moammar Gadhafi was indicted in Mauritania on Monday and transferred to a public jail, according to a justice official.
Abdullah al-Senoussi, Libya’s former head of intelligence, is wanted by the International Criminal Court, as well as by France and Libya, for crimes he allegedly committed during his time at Gadhafi’s side.
The judge in Mauritania is indicting al-Senoussi on a technicality after the ex-spy chief tried to enter Mauritania disguised as a Tuareg chieftain, the official said.
On the run since the fall of Tripoli last year, al-Senoussi attempted to enter the Nouakchott airport in March on a fake Malian passport after he boarded a flight from Morocco.
The ex-spy chief was transferred to the central prison, along with his nephew, who arrived in Mauritania alongside him, the justice official said. The nephew’s identity has not been disclosed.
BAHRAIN DEFENDS RECORD
Bahraini officials defended the Gulf kingdom’s record before the U.N.’s top human rights body Monday by insisting that the government has moved to investigate alleged abuses and compensate victims during the 15-month uprising by majority Shiites against the ruling Sunni monarchy.
The U.N. Human Rights Council’s review of Bahrain’s human rights record, part of a routine assessment that all 193 U.N. member nations undergo every four years, comes at a particularly sensitive time after widespread protests and the monarchy’s crackdown on dissent.
Bahrain’s human rights minister, Salah bin Ali Mohammed Abdulrahman, led a delegation Monday making the case that the government is moving quickly to improve its human rights record after allegations of abuses by Bahraini security forces, and widespread arrests and workplace purges.
Members of the 47-nation council, whose report on Bahrain is due Wednesday, urged the nation to grant new trials to activists convicted in military courts. A Bahraini court last month ordered a full re-examination of the cases against mostly Shiite activists found guilty last year of plots to overthrow the Western-allied Sunni dynasty.
Information for this article was contributed by Ahmed Al-Haj, Hussein Malla, Bassem Mroue, Ahmed Mohamed and John Heilprin of The Associated Press; and by Robert F. Worth, Alan Cowell and Rick Gladstone of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/22/2012