Six Spanish tourists and two Yemenis killed in a suicide car bomb in Marib at a 3000 year old temple. Multiple injuries also reported. The reason:

MSNBC: No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but police in Mareb said they had received information last month about a possible al-Qaida attack.Security sources said the "terrorist attack" followed an al-Qaida statement demanding the release of some of its members jailed in the Arab state and warned of unspecified actions.

Al-Qaida has an active presence in Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, despite government efforts to fight the terror network. Al-Qaida was blamed for the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Aden that killed 17 American sailors and the attack on a French oil tanker that killed one person two years later.

Al-Qaeda demanding the release of its members? Who is still in jail after all the rehabilitations, escapes and negotiated releases? Yemen's policy of negotiation and appeasement breeds assertiveness. Exporting and paying jihaddis will work for only so long. Sooner or later the militants will start making demands domestically. And the way jihaddis make demands is by killing people and blowing things up.

It is quite a tragedy the tourists were killed. Yemenis are a very hospitable people and I'm sure there is a lot of sadness in Yemen as well.

Yemen's tourist industry, one potential growth sector in the extremely poor nation, also was devastated today. This act of wanton murder of innocent people will affect the future of Yemen for decades as it will the families of the victims. Yemen today is one step closer to state failure as future tourist revenues will be substantially decreased.

Posted by: JaneNovak at 12:43 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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