All Blog Posts from Internet Terror Monitor

The Islamic Jihad in Yemen, the group that claimed responsibility for the attack on the U.S embassy in Sanaa Wednesday, demanded that the U.S. and British Embassies in Sanaa be shut down, in a statement mailed to a number of Yemeni news websites. The group had claimed to have an affiliation with al Qaeda. “We, the organization of the Islamic Jihad in Yemen, affiliated to al Qaeda, demand from the U.S. and British embassies to leave Yemen immediately,” the statement said.

Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, Yemen Branch, released a 7:39 minute video showing what the group said was the “firing of three Katyusha missiles on the oil refinery of Safir, eastern the capital Sanaa.” Although the video showed the three missiles, none of them were seen being fired.

The tape also featured an audio statement by a group spokesperson in which he said that the attack came in line with Bin Laden’s directives to target oil installations that supply “Crusader forces” with Arab oil. He provided religious arguments legitimizing the attack on their own interests. The video closed with a statement by a man identified as “Mujahid Hamza al-Qate’ey” who addressed Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh calling him “the Ariel Sharon of Yemen.” He pledged to free all the militants locked up in Yemeni prisons on his orders.

The group had issued another Internet statement last month in which it claimed that it fired three Katyusha rockets at the oil refinery of Safir. The statement said that the attack took place on June 25 and was aimed at "drying up the supply of fuel to the Zionists and Crusaders."

Yemeni authorities did not report the incident, but some media reports quoted witnesses in the area as saying that two rockets had been found intact and hadn't been fired, while the third missed its target.