By Darrin Simmons
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
SANA’A, Yemen-Fourteen Al-Qaeda inmates escaped from the central prison in Yemen’s capital Thursday while gunmen launched a deadly assault on the facility, reported officials.
Seven policemen and three gunmen were killed. Another two policemen and two gunmen were wounded, and one of the attackers was captured, the foreign ministry said.
The attack began when an explosives-laden vehicle exploded at the facility’s eastern entrance, breeching a hole in the prison fence, security. Gunmen also attacked guards at the main entrance to create a diversion that allowed the prisoners to escape through the hole in the fence.
Residents reported that an explosion and heavy gunfire rang out near the jail where officials say around 5,000 prisoners are held, before security reinforcements were dispatched to the area.
Nasser al-Wuhayshi, chief of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who is seen by the United States as the network’s deadliest franchise, vowed in August to free imprisoned members of his network.
Wuhayshi escaped from the same Sana’a prison with 22 other members of AQAP in February 2006 and was named as the group’s leader a year later.
The AQAP detainees escaped through a 44-metre (145-foot) tunnel they dug between their cell and a nearby mosque.
Saudi and Yemeni Al-Qaeda branches combined in January 2009 to form AQAP, posing a serious threat to Western interests across the region.
Thursday’s assault was the second major one in the capital in a little over two months. In early December, a suicide bomber and several gunmen attacked the defense ministry in a brazen operation in broad daylight, killing at least 52 people and wounding another 167.
Former prisoners at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba who had been returned to Saudi Arabia in December 2006 later escaped to Yemen, two years ago after completing a reform program.
After a wave of deadly Al-Qaeda attacks between 2003 and 2006, Saudi authorities launched a crackdown on the local branch of the group founded by the late Osama bin Laden.
AQAP has taken advantage of the weakening of the central government in Sana’a since a popular uprising that toppled President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011.
For more information, please the following:
Al Bawaba-14 ‘mostly Qaeda’ inmates flee Yemen jail after attack-13 February 2014
Al Jazeera-Al-Qaeda inmates freed in Yemen jail attack-13 February 2014
Global Post-14 ‘mostly Qaeda’ inmates flee Yemen jail after attack-13 February 2014
Reuters-Attack on prison in Yemeni capital kills 11-13 February 2014
