Khaled Al-Mahdi, Special to Arab News

SANAA, 1 October 2003 — Yemen has foiled car bomb attacks against three embassies in the capital Sanaa as a previously unknown Islamist group calling itself the “Qaeda of Jihad” threatened to attack Yemeni officials and foreign interests.

Security forces seized three vehicles packed with explosives intended to be used in bombing the US, UK and German embassies, a Western diplomat in Sanaa told Arab News yesterday.

The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Yemeni Interior Ministry alerted embassies of Western countries after the seizure of the cars over the weekend. He said the would-be attackers used fake diplomatic license plates for the three cars that were intercepted in different parts of Sanaa. Yemeni officials refused to comment.

A Yemeni weekly reported yesterday that five Islamist organizations announced in a statement that they had merged to set up a group called the “Qaeda of Jihad”, and threatened to stage attacks against top Yemeni officials and foreign interests.

“The Al-Qaeda organization has been strategically restructured to be named the Qaeda of Jihad, the international organization for fighting Zionists and crusaders,” the Al-Balagh newspaper quoted the statement as saying.

The statement said the new group was formed by “merging Al-Qaeda with the Egyptian Jihad Organization, the Yemeni Jihad Organization, the (Yemeni) Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, the Organization of Descendants of Companions (of the Prophet Muhammad) in the land of the Arabian Peninsula, and the Algerian Al-Dawa Al-Salafia group.” The new group threatened to stage “wide-ranging assassinations that target Prime Minister (Abdul-Qader Ba-Jammal) and members of his Cabinet.” Dubbing foreign diplomatic missions and companies “legitimate targets” for its attacks, the group warned Yemenis to stay away from those targets to secure their safety. It said that 48 suicide combatants were ready to strike. The new group named Al-Moutaz Bellah Al-Qandahari Al-Yamani as its leader.

According to Reuters news agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will soon open an office in Yemen as part of the US global “war on terror”.