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Cia kills us citizen Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021107/ap_wo_en_po/yemen_explosion_1http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021107/ap_wo_en_po/yemen_explosion_1
U.S. citizen said to be among six militants killed in Yemen
Thu Nov 7,10:39 AM ET
By AHMED AL-HAJ, Associated Press Writer
SAN'A, Yemen - An American is believed to be among the six militants killed in a CIA (news - web sites) missile strike over the weekend, a security source said Thursday.
The six men, including Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, al-Qaida's top man in Yemen, were killed Sunday when a Hellfire missile fired from a CIA pilotless spy plane hit the car they were traveling in.
The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the five victims were known by their aliases — Saleh Abu Hamam, Al-Qia'gaa, Abu Jirah, Mounir and Jalal, also known as Ahmed Hijazi. Jalal is believed to be a U.S. citizen, according to the source. He provided no other details.
Authorities were still trying to establish the men's real identities, the source told The Associated Press.
He said al-Harethi, who was in his mid-40s, first met al-Qaida leader and top terror suspect Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) in the 1980s during the war in Afghanistan (news - web sites) against the Soviet occupation. The two men had kept in touch after the war ended and met again in Sudan, where bin Laden sojourned in the 1990s, the source said.
The daily September 26, meanwhile, said that besides the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole (news - web sites), which left 17 American sailors dead, al-Harethi had plotted last month's attack on the French tanker Limburg off Yemen, in which a Bulgarian crew member was killed and 90,000 barrels of oil were discharged into the Gulf of Aden waters.
The newspaper, which is close to the office of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, also reported that al-Harethi was responsible for several terror attacks in Yemen and that he planned fresh attacks on Western targets in the country.
Al-Harethi had been sought for more than a year as a suspect in the Cole bombing in Aden port.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in the capital San'a closed for security reasons and protection of the building was increased. There were fears that the CIA involvement in the attack could create a backlash in a country where Islamic militants have operated freely in the past and most oppose U.S. policies toward Iraq and the perceived American bias toward Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.
Yemen's cooperation with U.S. authorities in the war against terror is a sensitive issue in this Arab country, where al-Qaida is active and is the ancestral homeland of bin Laden.
Yemeni officials appeared to have been taken by surprise over the leaks about the Hellfire missile coming from the United States, and provincial and federal officials wouldn't openly discuss the reports.
Nevertheless, Yemeni officials said privately that they had been working closely with the Americans and that Yemeni intelligence began monitoring al-Harethi's movements as soon as his car left his farm in Marib province on the day of the attack.
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