ATTACKERS armed with automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and at least one suicide car bomb assaulted the United States embassy in the Yemeni capital yesterday.
Sixteen people were killed, including six assailants, officials said. No Americans were hurt in the attempt to breach the compound walls, which the US said bore "all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda attack".
Multiple explosions rang out outside the h
eavily guarded facility, and gunfire raged for at least 10 minutes at the concrete checkpoints that ring it. The dead included six Yemeni guards and four civilians, the state news agency SABA reported. Officials said people queuing for visas were among the casualties.
It was the deadliest attack on a compound that has been targeted four times in recent years by bombings, mortars and shootings. Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, has struggled to put down al-Qaeda-linked Islamic militants.
In the 9:15 am attack, gunmen in a vehicle attacked a checkpoint outside the embassy with RPGs and automatic weapons, Yemeni security officials said. During the assault, suicide bombers in a vehicle made it through the checkpoint and hit a second, inner ring of concrete blocks, and detonated.
President George Bush said: "This attack is a reminder that we are at war with extremists who will murder innocent people to achieve their ideological objectives."
Some of the attackers were dressed as Yemeni troops, and Yemeni emergency personnel who rushed to the scene were hit by heavy sniper fire from gunmen waiting across the street from the embassy.
Yemeni security officials said a little-known group called Islamic Jihad, unrelated to the Palestinian group of the same name, claimed responsibility.
But Yemeni authorities have blamed the group for past attacks that have later been claimed by al-Qaeda.
Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the State Department in Washington, said the embassy's security upgrades, combined with the response of security officials, stopped the attackers.
The explosions hit passers-by and damaged a nearby residential compound where many westerners live. Smoke rose from near the yellow concrete blocks that ring the embassy.
At least seven wounded civilians, including children from nearby houses, were taken to hospital, a medical official said.
One of the Yemeni security officials said that the attack had the style of an al-Qaeda operation.
The assault highlighted the difficulties Yemen has had in reining in Islamic militants, who operate with considerable freedom in the impoverished country, where much of the mountainous countryside is lawless.
More than a third of the inmates at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are from Yemen.
The US has been negotiating with the Yemeni government over their return to the country but American officials say there has been slow progress in getting either security guarantees or assurances that returned detainees would be treated humanely.
Poor record with terror suspects has frustrated WashingtonYEMEN has a history of being unable to hang on to terrorist suspects. Seventeen suspects in the 2000 USS Cole bombing that killed 17 American sailors were arrested; ten of them escaped in 2003. One of the primary suspects, Jamal al-Badawi, escaped jail in 2004.
He was taken back into custody last autumn under pressure from the US government.
The US was also angered when a Yemeni-American, Jaber Elbaneh, convicted in Yemen for planning attacks on oil installations, was freed as he appealed his 10-year prison sentence.
Elbaneh has since been taken back into custody, Yemeni officials say, but Sana has refused American requests that Elbaneh be handed over to the US for trial on charges of providing support or resources to a terrorist organisation.
