Defected army soldiers stand in line as they guard a street where protestors demonstrated to demand the resignation of Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sanaa, Yemen, Friday. Photo: AP
The head of the media department of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was killed in an air raid on militant outposts in Yemen, and gunmen retaliated by blowing up a gas export pipeline, Yemeni officials and residents said on Saturday.
The death of Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian described by Yemeni officials as high on their wanted list, is a fresh blow to the Islamist group regarded by Washington as the most serious threat to the United States, following the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki last month.
But the destruction of France's Total gas pipeline, which transports gas from the central Maarib province to Belhaf port on the Arabian Sea, was expected to deal a severe blow to the Yemeni economy, already reeling from months of protests demanding President Ali Abdullah Saleh step down.
The Yemeni Defence Ministry said six other militants died in the air raids late on Friday on militant hideouts near the town of Azzan in the southern Shabwa province, including the oldest son and a cousin of Awlaki, a US-born cleric.
But local residents and officials said they believed it was foreign aircraft, flying at high altitude and smaller than the Soviet-made Yemeni air force planes, that launched at least three strikes on several targets in the area.
"There were planes flying high. I could hear the sounds of their engines but I could not make them out," one witness who declined to be identified told Reuters. "All of a sudden, the area was shaken by successive explosions," he added.
A Yemeni official described al-Banna as a "dangerous" militant and one of the most wanted people internationally.
Witnesses said militants were seen removing several bodies and an unknown number of injured people from the scene after the raid early on Saturday.
Last month, a US drone killed Awlaki, identified by U.S. intelligence as "chief of external operations" for al Qaeda's Yemen branch and a Web-savvy propagandist for the Islamist cause, US officials said.
Relatives of Awlaki said the cleric's son and cousin were due to be buried at the site of the attack.
Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda trying to establish a foothold in Yemen captured large swathes of southern Abyan province, including the provincial capital Zinjibar, earlier this year.
The Yemeni army last month drove the militants out of Zinjibar, which lies east of a strategic shipping strait through which some 3 million barrels of oil pass daily.
GAS PIPELINE
Residents and officials said the 322-km pipeline, which links gas fields in Maarib, east of Sanaa, to a $4.5 billion Total-led liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, was blown up soon after the raids.
Sources at Total told Reuters that the pipeline was blown up in two places, stopping the gas supplies that feed the Belhaf LNG plant. Witnesses said the flames were visible from several kilometres away.
The company evacuated nearly half its foreign staff to neighbouring Djibouti, and sent some local and French engineers to start repairing the pipeline.
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