'Blood was running like a river' - 137 killed, 345 injured in suicide attacks on Yemen mosques

What Muslims Are Good At

137 killed, 345 injured in suicide attacks on Yemen mosques

ADEN, Yemen (AP) — A group claiming to be a Yemeni branch of the Islamic State group says it carried out a string of suicide bombings in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, that killed a total of 137 people and injured 345 others. 

The group posted an online statement saying that five suicide bombers carried out what it described as a "blessed operation" against the "dens of the Shiites." 

The bombers attacked the Badr and al-Hashoosh mosques, located across town from each other, during midday Friday prayers. 

The claim, posted in an online statement, could not immediately be independently confirmed and offered no proof of an IS role. It was posted on the same website in which the Islamic State affiliate in Libya claimed responsibility for Wednesday's deadly attack on a museum in Tunisia. 

From the Independent:

More than 120 people died and hundreds were injured as four suicide bombers attacked two mosques in Yemen’s capital city. 

So many people were killed or injured that hospitals in Sanaa struggled to cope with the emergency and public pleas were made for blood donors to come forward. 

Many of the worshippers in the mosques were supporters of the Shia Houthi fighters who control the capital, and responsibility for the carnage was claimed by Isis which regards all Shia as heretics – though it was impossible to immediately verify this and some analysts were sceptical. 

The final death toll was uncertain last night, with sources giving varying accounts, at least one putting it at 137 with a further 350 people injured. But the authorities warned that with so many of the wounded suffering critical injuries the toll is sure to rise. 

After the blasts the wounded were loaded on the back of pick-up trucks and were taken to hospitals where, as they waited for treatment, they lay side by side with the dead. 

Among the dead was, according to Al Jazeera and Houthi-owned television, the imam of the Badr mosque, the prominent Houthi cleric al-Murtada bin Zayd al-Mahatwari. 

Two senior Houthi leaders, both members of the Zaidi Shia sect and named as Taha al-Mutawakkil and Khalid Madani, were reported to have been seriously wounded. 

“Dozens of people have been injured or killed. We will understand the exact numbers of [the] dead and wounded soon. These are two very central and commonly used mosques,” the editor-in-chief of the Yemen Post newspaper, Hakim Almasmari, told reporters.

Posts for Nov 1st: Jihadist arrested in Sweden, girls killed by Al-Shabab, Packages' plot, Italian Muslims on niqab, Suharto "national hero"?, former Dutch Jihadist denounces Jihad, Abu Bakar Bashir update

1. Sweden: police arrest suspects in terrorist bomb threat: Although the police refused to give more details, because it's an ongoing investigation, "local media reports suggested that the target had likely been a large shopping mall in the centre of the city".
2. Somalia: Al-Shabab executes two girls, town horrified. The two accused "spies" died amid a fusillade of bullets from a firing squad organized by a hardline Islamist militia. The condemned pair were only girls, aged 15 and 18, and their grieving relatives say they were uneducated, usually stayed at home and could not have spied for anyone.
3. Yemen: suspect held in connection with packages' plot, released: It seems the responsible is a Saudi national. Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, who tops a Saudi Arabian terrorism list, is the brother of a suicide bomber killed in an attempt to kill Saudi counter-terrorism chief Prince Mohammed bin Nayef last year.
4. Italy: Muslims and niqab: "Italian women go around naked. Muslim women should be covered to be pure".
5. Indonesia: Dictator Suharto to be named "national hero"? In a move that has caused consternation to human rights activists and heated debate in the country’s media, the Indonesian government is now proposing that the former dictator be formally declared a “national hero”.
6. Netherlands: prominent Jihadist recants and renounces terrorism. Jason Walters, a member of Hofstadgroep, the group whose leader was Mohammed Bouyeri, Theo van Gogh's killer, has written a letter in which he denounces the Jihadist world. "The image that the world only exists of believers and infidels, in which the latter are motivated only to destroy the former, is a childish and coarse simplification of reality,” Walters said. “It ignores the complexity and many nuances of which reality is rich”. He called on Islamists “to put down their weapons and employ other, productive methods” in order to bring about reforms instead of blaming the United States and the West. Anyone having more information on this guy?
7. Indonesia: Preacher funded terrorism in Aceh province. Radical Islamist preacher Abu Bakar Bashir allegedly raised tens of thousands of dollars to set up a training camp for militants in Indonesia’s Aceh province, a court heard on Thursday.

Lastly, a funny video:

Yemen: supporting the child bride laws

This is an update on this story:

Sheik Mohammed Hamzi, an official of the Islamist Yemeni opposition party Islaah and the imam of the Al-Rahman mosque in the Yemeni capital of Sana, is one of those who staunchly opposes a legal ban on child marriage.
Although he emphasizes that a woman should not get married before she is physically and mentally ready and that she herself needs to accept the marriage, he believes a law that prohibits child marriage constitutes a rights violation.  
“I am against the child marriage law because it restrains the freedom of others. When a certain age [for marriage] is set, it violates the rights of others. For example, imagine a young man of 13 or 14 years of age who wants to have sex. … This is a violation of his rights,” Sheik Hamzi told The Times in an interview at his Sana home last week.

The fact that girls are abused, raped (see Nojoud’s case - 1, 2, 3-) and even killed is not important. The important thing is that some kind of teenager with pimples could have his “rights” to having sex diminished. Let’s get this right: none of these girls are married to a 15 year-old boy. They are married to full-grown adults (even old guys) who want to have a very obedient girl at home.

Hazmi dismisses claims by rights groups that there is a problem with child marriages in his country. He said the child-bride cases that have been reported in the media were merely isolated incidents.
“Just ask my mother and sisters how many times they’ve found a little girl getting married at the marriages they’ve attended,"  he said. "Not many.”
The country's Ministry of Social Affairs, on the contrary, says child marriages are common in Yemen. According to a 2009 report by the ministry, a quarter of all females in Yemen marry before the age of 15. (Of course, this means that they are so few, doesn’t it).
To Hazmi, however,  women's- and children's-rights activists are putting a few isolated cases of  child marriage in the spotlight to rally support for the law.
"There is no problem here with child marriage," he said. "These cases of young girls getting married are exceptions. These organizations that are promoting for this law couldn’t find any examples except for those of Nujoud and Elham."  (NOTE.- Some days ago another 11-year-old girl was also hospitalised after suffering from genital injuries. If I, that have no ground or deep knowledge of the problem but just what I read, have found another case, which happened very few days ago, imagine someone who has access to the data base of the Interior Ministry. In fact, around 50% of Yemeni girls are married before 18).
Hazmi said the groups that are campaigning for the law were harmful to the country, trying to promote a "Western agenda" in Yemen.
“It’s all a Western agenda they are following," he said. "They get paid from the West to make us to believe in Western culture. This is very bad because our culture is different here."
The best that could happen, in his opinion, is that the government shuts them down.
“No one wants to marry these women's-rights activists anyway," he said. "They’re just depressed that they are not married and jealous.”

Oh, please, this is soooo old an argument. Every woman who wants basic rights is because is ugly and doesn’t have any gorgeous guy this one to marry. But it’s interesting that chauvinist male pigs always use the same type of reason to deny women’s rights. “There are no males to marry these women, that’s why we marry prepubescent girls, in fact 1 out of four”. Doesn’t it sound ridiculous?

Anyway, for me it’s worse to see women demonstrating against child brides ban, than seen this bearded lazy imam speaking against them.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Another Dead Child-Bride (kristof.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Brides of Death: Yemen Child Dies from Rupture of Sex Organs after Marriage (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)
• Dead Yemeni child bride tied up, raped, says mom (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• 13-year-old Yemeni bride dies of bleeding (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Bride, 11, Hospitalized with Genital Injuries (abcnews.go.com)

Cross-posted from T&P.

Yemen: women protests ban on child marriages

Thousands of women demonstrated outside parliament Sunday to oppose legislation banning the marriage of girls under 17. The protesters held up banners proclaiming “don’t ban what Allah made permissible,” or “stop violating Islamic sharia law in the name of rights and freedoms.” Proposed amendments to the civil status law stalled in parliament last August after severe opposition to a government proposal that would ban girls under 17 and males under 18 from marrying. Child marriages are common, especially in rural areas, where girls as young as eight have been married off.

via “Stop violating Islamic sharia in the name of rights and freedoms!”.

I bet Nojoud doesn't think (1, 2, 3) the same as these women.

From Yemen Times:

Mirandizing Mutallab "Deprived Our Intelligence Agencies of Valuable Information"

Abdulmutallab's lawyer may prove to be very expensive indeed as security agencies here and in Europe scramble to gather intelligence on probable pending attacks by al Qaeda. More background from the In From the Cold site via The Jawa Report. (Don't miss the inspirational comments from "Guest" on the Jawa site with regard to re-naming of changes in European security alert levels.)

Monday, January 25, 2010
Waiting for the Next Shoe to Drop

It doesn't take an intelligence analyst to understand that the terror threat to the U.S. (and its allies) has increased significantly over the past six weeks. True, there has been only a slight increase in the official "threat" levels in both the United States and the U.K. But a look at events since late December affirms that terrorists are launching new attacks against the west--and security officials are scrambling to defeat them.

The latest campaign began on Christmas Day, with the attempted bombing of that Northwest Airlines flight between Amsterdam and Detroit. During a brief interrogation, the Nigerian suspect, 23-year-old Farouk Abdulmutallab, freely admitted his terror connections and suggested that other operatives had trained with him in Yemen, in a camp run by the local Al Qaida affiliate.

U.S. officials (and their counterparts in the United Kingdom) claim there is no hard evidence of pending attacks. But their actions also suggest that neither government is willing to gamble on the absence of definitive information. Not long after Abdulmutallab's failed bombing, the U.S. reportedly shifted 3,000 air marshals from domestic service, to international flights bound for this country. The move has put such a strain on the air marshal service that personnel from other law enforcement agencies--including the Secret Service and the Border Patrol--are being used to provide security on domestic flights.

The Obama Administration is also trying to plug holes in our intel collection and analysis efforts--gaps that allowed Abdulmutallab to board that flight, despite warnings from his father; terrorist chatter about a Nigerian's involvement in a possible airliner plot, and the suspect's presence on a "no entry" list in Great Britian. There were also missed clues at the Amsterdam Airport, including Abdulmutallab's purchase of a one-way ticket--with cash--and his lack of luggage.

Since then, there have been other, disturbing indications of other attacks in the offing. Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (which sent the young Nigerian on his mission) has promised more strikes, in retaliation for U.S. drone attacks on terror leaders.

After the failed bombing attempt, FBI agents began tracing a Ghana-to-Yemen pipeline that took Abdulmutallab to the Al Qaida training camp. They also initiated efforts to find other terrorists who may have trained with the Nigerian. Earlier this month, British intelligence sources told CBS News that at least 20 other terror operatives might have finished their training at the same time, and departed for locations--and assignments--unknown. Other estimates put the number of terrorists trained with Abdulmutallab at more than two dozen.

Reacting to these events, the British government raised its terror threat to the second highest level (severe) last Friday, saying that an attack was "highly likely," despite the lack of firm evidence. But the threat picture became more clear over the weekend, with the U.K. Mirror reporting that an "unusually high" number of people on no-fly lists had tried to board U.S.-bound jets over the past week. Given that revelation, Britain's elevated security policy seemed entirely justified.

We should also note that the U.K.'s heightened posture was implemented after a conversation between President Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, suggesting that the increased security measures may have been influenced by U.S. concerns.

And, if that weren't enough, Osama bin Laden himself weighed in over the weekend, releasing an audio tape that praised for Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attack, and promising that more will follow, as long as the U.S. continues to support Israel. While it's highly unlikely that the Al Qaida leader had advance knowledge of the bombing attempt, his message was considered noteworthy for an important reason. In the tape, bin Laden repeats some of the same language heard in tapes that preceded the 2005 terror attacks in Britain, and the 2008 strike on the Danish Embassy in Pakistan. Use of identical phrases in the latest tape suggests it could be a prelude to a new attack, although bin Laden's warnings are sometimes issued up to a year in advance.

Is the U.S. prepared for a new Al Qaida attack--or perhaps, a wave of terrorist strikes? The Obama Administration has issued the usual statements of reassurance, but recent events have exposed holes in our defenses. The decision to "Mirandize" Abdulmutallab after limited interrogation deprived our intelligence agencies of valuable information. Unless the suspect decides to resume his cooperation (don't hold your breath), our spooks and security personnel will be at a disadvantage in trying to determine the limits of Al Qaida's new campaign, and the status of specific attack plans within that framework.

The coming months are shaping up as some of the most decisive--and dangerous--since 9-11.

Winner of "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" Contest

This just in from WBZTV38
Feb 2, 2010 4:26 pm US/Eastern

Yemen To Boston LNG Shipments Approved

BOSTON (AP) - Coast Guard officials say they've developed a security plan to allow the passage of tankers carrying liquefied natural gas shipments from Yemen through the Port of Boston.

Coast Guard Capt. John Healey said the planned shipments that are set to begin at the end of the month have been under review for nearly a year.

Healey, captain of the port, declined to give details of the security plans but said he decide on a case-by-case basis whether to allow each ship to an offloading area in Everett, Mass.

The tankers filled with the potentially explosive gas have become a renewed cause for concern after al-Qaida's offshoot in Yemen allegedly plotted the Christmas Day attempt to bomb a U.S. passenger jet.

About 30 shipments from Yemen are expected annually.

I would bet real money if I had any that the next terrorist "incident" will result in Boston Mayor Thomas Menino pulling the plug on this little security experiment faster than it takes an LNG tanker to go boom and take out half the city.

A great deal of attention has been paid to the terror hazards associated with these huge tankers sailing under a major bridge into an enclosed harbor area, but plans to move the storage facility to a more isolated island location in Boston Harbor have gone nowhere. All the publicity has, of course, made the LNG tankers tempting targets for anyone who might try a shot at getting an explosive device onto one of these enormous floating bombs.

Ex-CIA Analyst Scheuer Exposes Obama Fallacies

Krauthammer Excoriates Obama

Looks Like Nidal Hasan Needs a New Prayer Partner!

Woohoo! FOX greets us this morning with news that Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan may be in the market for a new "spiritual advisor".

Imam Linked to Ft. Hood Rampage Believed Among 30 Al Qaeda Killed in Airstrike

The radical Muslim imam linked to the rampage at Fort Hood is believed to have been killed in a Yemen airstrike that may have also taken out the region's top Al Qaeda leader and 30 other militants, a security official told Reuters on Thursday.

The raid in Yemen's east targeted an Al Qaeda leadership meeting held to organize terror attacks. It is believed to have killed Anwar al-Awlaki and at least two senior members in the organization, including the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

"Awlaki is suspected to be dead [in the air raid]," Reuters quoted an unnamed Yemeni official as saying.

The head of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasser al-Wahishi and his deputy, Saeed al-Saudi Shahrani, were present at the meeting and are believed to have died, but their deaths could not immediately be confirmed.

"The raid was carried out as dozens of members of Al Qaeda were meeting in Wadi Rafadh," a source told AFP, referring to a rugged location about 400 miles east of the capital.

"Members of the group's leadership, including Saad al-Fathani and Mohammad Ahmed Saleh al-Omir, were among those killed," he was quoted as saying.

"Saudis and Iranians at the Wadi Rafadh meeting were also among the dead," said the source, without going into detail.

Awlaki was once the imam at the prominent Dar al-Hijrah Mosque in Virginia, where the FBI says he had a close relationship with two of the 9/11 hijackers. He fled the U.S. in 2002, eventually returning to Yemen, where he promoted the Iraqi and Afghan insurgencies to a growing religious following in sermons and online.

In an interview posted on Al Jazeera's Web site, Awlaki said he received an e-mail from Fort Hood gunman Maj. Nidal Hasan on Dec. 17, 2008, "asking for an edict regarding the [possibility] of a Muslim soldier [killing] colleagues who serve with him in the American army."

Awlaki, who was born in Las Cruces, N.M., said subsequent e-mails "mentioned the religious justifications for targeting the Jews with missiles." He told the Washington Post in an interview that Hasan eventually came to regard him as a confidant.

A Yemeni official, also speaking on condition of anonymity to AFP, said those attending the meeting "planned to launch terrorist attacks against economic installations in Yemen, in retaliation for Yemeni strikes launched last week."

On Dec. 17, warplanes and security forces on the ground attacked what authorities said was an Al Qaeda training camp in the area of Mahsad in the southern province of Abyan. Saleh el-Shamsy, a provincial security official, said at least 30 suspected militants were killed. Witnesses, however, put the number killed at over 60 in the heaviest strike and said the dead were mostly civilians.

Read the rest.

Yemeni Child Bride Age 12 Dies in Labor

From CNN:

Yemeni girl, 12, dies in painful childbirth

By Mohammed JamjoomCNN

AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- A 12-year-old Yemeni girl, who was forced into marriage, died during a painful childbirth that also killed her baby, a children's rights group said Monday.

Fawziya Ammodi struggled for three days in labor, before dying of severe bleeding at a hospital on Friday, said the Seyaj Organization for the Protection of Children.

"Although the cause of her death was lack of medical care, the real case was the lack of education in Yemen and the fact that child marriages keep happening," said Seyaj President Ahmed al-Qureshi.

Born into an impoverished family in Hodeidah, Fawziya was forced to drop out of school and married off to a 24-year-old man last year, al-Qureshi said.

Child brides are commonplace in Yemen, especially in the Red Sea Coast where tribal customs hold sway. Hodeidah is the fourth largest city in Yemen and an important port.

More than half of all young Yemeni girls are married off before the age of 18 -- many times to older men, some with more than one wife, a study by Sanaa University found.

While it was not immediately known why Fawziya's parents married her off, the reasons vary. Sometimes, financially-strapped parents offer up their daughters for hefty dowries.

Marriage means the girls are no longer a financial or moral burden to their parents. And often, parents will extract a promise from the husband to wait until the girl is older to consummate the marriage.

The issue of Yemeni child brides came to the forefront in 2008 with 10-year-old Nujood Ali.

She was pulled out of school and married to a man who beat and raped her within weeks of the ceremony.

To escape, Nujood hailed a taxi -- the first time in her life -- to get across town to the central courthouse where she sat on a bench and demanded to see a judge.

After a well-publicized trial, she was granted a divorce.

The Yemeni parliament tried in February to pass a law, setting the minimum marriage age at 17. But the measure has not reached the president because many parliamentarians argued it violates sharia, or Islamic law, which does not stipulate a minimum age.

Jewish teacher in Yemen was murdered

Yemen's anti-semitism continues to rear its ugly head:

(IsraelNN.com) Moshe Nahari, a Torah teacher and a well-known figure in Yemen's Jewish community, was murdered on Thursday morning in Reida, a city north of the capital city, Sanaa. According to the Arabic daily Ash-Sharq il-Awsat, Nahari's attacker called out, “Jew, receive the message of Islam” before shooting at him.

Nahari's friends said he had never attempted to hide his Jewishness. He hung a star of David on the door of his home and wore long peyot (sidelocks). One of his brothers is a leading rabbi in the Yemenite community.

The murderer fired on Nahari several times, made sure he was dead, and then waited for police to come. Ash-Sharq il-Awsat identified the killer as Abed el-Abdi, a former pilot. El-Abdi murdered his wife two years ago, but was not imprisoned because he agreed to give his wife's family financial compensation.

So not only was anti-semitism apparent here, so was Islamo-misogyny. That the repulsive lubricant didn't even serve a prison sentence for murdering his wife in an Islamic country should be no surprise. Is it any wonder that these murderers are able to continue on their demonic spree?

Yemen: 8-year-old's marriage, "terminated" by judge

I wrote yesterday about Nojoud, an 8-year-old girl, who demanded a divorce because she wanted to have "a respectful life". Well, today it has been reported that the judge has terminated the marriage, because she was underage and had not reached the puberty. Very good news, although nothing of the abuse and mistreatment, both physically and sexually was mentioned in the ruling. Her lawyer has stated that the ruling contains a "termination of the marriage", not a divorce, to "prevent the husband from reinstating the marriage".

On the other hand:

The court also ordered the child’s family to pay 50,000 Yemeni rials (about $250) in compensation to the 30-year-old ex-husband.

Seems to me she should have been awarded the compensation for the abuses...

Yemen: 8-year-old girl demands a divorce because she wants to "have a respectful life"

Nojoud Muhammed Nasser, 8, went to court by herself in Yemen.

Nasser (8-year-old) complained about her husband's behavior.

He used to do bad things to me, and I had no idea as to what a marriage is. I would run from one room to another in order to escape, but in the end he would catch me and beat me and then continued to do what he wanted. I cried so much but no one listened to me. One day I ran away from him and came to the court and talked to them. … Whenever I wanted to play in the yard he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him. This lasted for two months. He was too tough with me, and whenever I asked him for mercy, he beat me and slapped me and then used me. I just want to have a respectful life and divorce him.

The husband:

Thamer is unrepentant but willing to be flexible: "Yes, I was intimate with her, but I have done nothing wrong, as she is my wife and I have the right and no one can stop me. But if the judge or other people insist that I divorce her, I will do it, it's ok."

Just following Mohammed...