French family goes missing in Yemen

SANA'A // Yemeni authorities are investigating the disappearance of a French family thought to have joined a group of Salafists. The family went missing last month shortly after arriving in the country. News of their disappearance comes after a spate of recent arrests of foreigners suspected of arriving in Yemen to join militant Islamist groups.

"According to initial investigations, a French family has disappeared two days after its arrival in Sana'a late May. It is believed that it has gone with a group of Salafists," said a security official who requested anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media. The family of four - a husband, his wife and their two children - arrived in Sana'a on tourist visas on May 28. They spent two nights at two separate hotels and then on May 30 met with a group of men thought to be Salafists before disappearing, the official said. "The security has intensified its search for the French family," he added.

Yemen has arrested dozens of foreigners after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who attempted to blow up a transatlantic airliner on December 25 over Detroit, was said to have been trained by al Qa'eda in Yemen. The security official said some of the recently detained foreigners - including Britons, Americans, Africans and Asians - are believed to be linked to Abdulmutallab and that the arrests were made after foreign agencies provided names of people they wanted detained or put under surveillance. Among the suspects being held are 12 Americans, three of them on terrorism charges, according to US officials.

Meanwhile, armed tribesmen yesterday blew up an oil pipeline in the north-eastern province of Mareb after the government recently bombed the area in retaliation for an attack on a military convoy. The government has launched a military operation in Wadi Abidah in Mareb to catch suspected al Qa'eda militants believed to be behind an ambush of a military convoy on June 5 in which an army colonel and a soldier were killed and three others wounded, according to the defence ministry website.

"The operation is meant to arrest Hasan Abdullah al Oqaili, a leading al Qa'eda member and his group ?It will continue and will not stop until the terrorist group is arrested," a statement on the website said yesterday. The pipeline, which transfers crude from Safer in Mareb to the Red Sea Terminal for export, was heavily damaged and oil export was suspended, according to local sources. While the government accused the al Qa'eda suspects of disrupting the oil pipeline, tribal sources said the pipeline blast was carried out by angry tribesmen from the al Hatik clan in protest of the army's shelling of their houses and targeting civilians.

Tribesmen twice blew up oil pipelines in Mareb in May in retaliation to an airstrike targeting al Qa'eda militants there that accidentally killed Jabir al Shabwani, deputy governor of Mareb and two bodyguards. At least two people have been killed and 10 wounded since Thursday in the army's shelling of the houses of suspected al Qa'eda militants, government officials and tribal sources said. Mareb is believed to be a strongholds for al Qa'eda militants who exploit the government's loose control over the area.

The Council of Mareb and al Jawf Tribes Federation, a tribal congregation, warned of the consequences of the government's heavy-handed military operations. "We strongly condemn the strikes that target innocent citizens and we affirm that going too far in this would push the tribes to take a decision to defend themselves," the council said in a statement yesterday. The statement said that Mareb will not be a "harbour for terrorism".