Thread FULL!!!__AMERICA AT WAR!__Use New Thread!: Yemen Terror Alert

» JenL_2 - Yemen Terror Alert

In response to message posted by BPyles:

This from 4/22 MSNBC.com:

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U.S. citizens put on alert in Yemen

Embassy warns Americans of possible terror attack

MSNBC NEWS SERVICES

In the latest of a string of alerts in recent months, the U.S. Embassy in Yemen warned Americans living there of of a possible imminent attack. The warning came as U.S. forces arrived in the north African country for the first time in an effort to train local forces to flush out terrorists believed to be taking refuge there.

“THE EMBASSY HAS received information that a terrorist attack against U.S. interests in Yemen might occur on or about April 23, 2002,” the embassy said on its Web site.

“While there are no details as to the possible target in Yemen, the Embassy is taking a number of additional security measures,” it added in a so-called warden message.

The embassy said that it was suspending immigrant visa and routine citizen services to the public Tuesday and that it would be open only for emergency citizen services.

The embassy has repeatedly warned Americans to avoid areas where pro-Palestinian protests were taking place in the capital, San’a, and itself became a target of anti-U.S. sentiment March 15 when a Yemeni man threw two devices at the embassy wall. They exploded but caused little damage.

Yemeni authorities have launched a U.S.-backed purge on supporters of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network, which is blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks that killed about 3,000 people in the United States.

The United States believes that followers of bin Laden are in hiding in remote parts of Yemen, where the U.S. destroyer Cole was attacked in 2000.

The embassy urged Americans to be vigilant, keep a low profile, vary routes and times of travel, avoid large crowds and demonstrations, and lock their doors and shut their windows while driving.

U.S. ADVISERS ON THE GROUND

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said in an interview published Sunday that U.S. military advisers had begun training Yemeni troops hunting remnants of al-Qaida. “There are not more than around 40 [advisers] to train our anti-terrorist security units,” he told the Italian daily newspaper La Stampa.

It was the first official confirmation that the U.S. advisers had arrived in the poor Arab state, expanding the U.S.-led war on terrorism, which has already seen U.S. troops deployed in the Philippines and includes a plan to send special forces instructors to the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Yemen, trying to shed its image as a haven for Islamic militants, has cooperated closely with Washington after Sept. 11 and launched the first military offensive against al-Qaida militants outside Afghanistan.

When U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney met Saleh in Yemen last month to discuss plans for Washington to send military personnel, an aide to Saleh said that there was popular support for stationing U.S. military trainers there as long as they did not take part in actual military operations.

In a separate report Sunday, a U.S. team was reportedly in Yemen to install a sophisticated monitoring system at airports and border crossings in an effort to catch members of al-Qaida members.

The system, which includes computers and cameras, will link Yemeni air and sea ports and land crossings to a central office in San’a, the official said.

The Yemeni official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not give the size of the U.S. team or say how long it had been in the country or when it was scheduled to leave.

A U.S. Embassy official said on condition of anonymity that the team was helping Yemen computerize its immigration points of entry and exit as part of a terrorist interdiction program.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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the team was helping Yemen computerize its immigration points of entry and exit as part of a terrorist interdiction program.

Would that we could do the same for our immigration points of entry & exit!....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2