Yemeni employee at US embassy in Sanaa is shot dead
SANAA, Yemen — A senior Yemeni officer working in the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa was killed Thursday in an attack that security sources said bore the hallmarks of the regional al-Qaida franchise. The killing comes amid sharp American scrutiny of security at foreign diplomatic posts in the wake of the militant assault one month ago on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, which killed a U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other diplomatic personnel.
Witnesses said that two men on a motorcycle drove up alongside the car of the embassy employee, Qassim M. Aklan, and one of them opened fire, killing him. Aklan was in the west of the city; the embassy is in the eastern part. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but militants have attacked official targets in Yemen in response to the government’s campaign against cells of the regional franchise, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which U.S. counterterrorism officials have called the terror network’s most active affiliate.
The State Department condemned the killing as “vicious.” Victoria Nuland, the department spokeswoman, said in a briefing: “He was a dedicated professional, and he will be greatly missed. We’re coordinating closely with the Yemeni authorities to investigate this attack and help bring those responsible to justice.”
But she said there was no certain information yet on whether he had been killed “for reasons that had something to do with his job or reasons that had nothing to do with his job.”
Aklan had worked at the embassy for 11 years, she said, and was out with a family member when he was shot. In his most recent position at the embassy, he was employed as a security investigator and liaison, a fairly common position in U.S. embassies, which means he could have been doing work that involved background checks or coordinating with local police.
Nuland denied earlier reports from officials in Yemen that Aklan had been helping to look into the episode last month in which protesters furious over a video produced in the United States that mocked the Prophet Muhammad breached the compound’s outer security perimeter.
The demonstrations were part of wider regional unrest over the video that started in Cairo and spreading to nearly 20 countries across the Middle East and beyond.
It was during the start of that unrest that militants overran the Benghazi mission.
Asked at the briefing whether the State Department interpreted the timing of the killing — one month after the Benghazi attack — as significant, Nuland said, “We just don’t know.”