Yemeni Police Arrest 19 After Deadly Suicide Bomb Attack on Us Embassy

Police have arrested 19 people in connection with a deadly suicide bomb attack on the US embassy in Yemen, authorities said today.

Sixteen people were killed in a series of explosions that rocked the country's capital Sana'a yesterday.

A group calling itself Islamic Jihad, which is unrelated to the Palestinian group of a similar name, claimed responsibility for the attack and has threatened other embassies including those of Britain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

The suspects are believed to have links with al-Qaida, which maintains an active presence in the country.

Heavy security around the US embassy meant that the victims of yesterday's blast were mostly Yemeni troops guarding the perimeter of the site's compound. Non-essential staff were evacuated earlier this year after a less serious incident. Six of the dead were the attackers. No Americans were hurt.

The attack, involving a double car bombing and machine-gun and rocket fire, bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida, whose growing strength in the Arab world's poorest country is alarming western governments and intelligence agencies at a time when the organization is seen as being on the defensive elsewhere in the Middle East.

In a statement to the Agence France-Presse news agency, Islamic Jihad in Yemen said it carried out the attack, which took place in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan. It also threatened to attack the British embassy and the missions of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates unless an unspecified number of prisoners were freed from Yemeni jails.

The US and Britain have helped to train Yemeni security forces.

The Saudis, who have all but crushed al-Qaida groups in their country, are especially nervous about a route for arms, men and money across the long desert border with their neighbor, and a possible link with lawless Somalia just across the Red Sea.

It is unclear whether Yemeni jihadis are in direct contact with al-Qaida "central" on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border but they have identifiable leaders and have recently been producing internet propaganda and focusing on hitting oil infrastructure and foreign interests in the country.

President Ali Abdullah Salih, in power since 1978, has been an ally of the US in its "war on terror" since the bombing attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbor in 2000, in which 17 US sailors died. But his government has been accused of taking a lax approach to extremists, especially after 23 prisoners tunneled their way out of a Sana'a prison in 2006 amid reports of collusion between officials and militants.

Western diplomats say Salih had quiet "understandings" with al-Qaida that it would be left alone to recruit fighters for the Iraq war if it did not attack inside Yemen. He has also pursued a program under which jihadis are allowed to go free if they promise to mend their ways.

"This attack is a reminder that we are at war with extremists who will murder innocent people to achieve their ideological objectives," George Bush said.

The US was angered when a Yemeni-American, Jaber Elbaneh, convicted in Yemen of planning attacks, was freed as he appealed against a 10-year prison sentence. Elbaneh was taken back into custody but Sana'a rejected US requests that he be handed over to the US for trial. American officials were also alarmed when Yemeni courts commuted a death sentence for Jamal al-Badawi, convicted of masterminding the USS Cole attack, giving him 15 years in prison.