DUBAI – A senior member of al-Qaeda's Yemen wing, whom the Yemeni government said it killed, has emerged on an internet forum, threatened on Tuesday to carry out attacks in the United States. Yemen declared an open war on al-Qaeda on its territory last month after the group's regional off-shoot claimed responsibility for a failed bomb attack on a Detroit-bound plane in December that grabbed the world's attention. "Today, you have attacked us in the middle of our household, so wait for what will befall you in the middle of yours ... We will blow up the earth from beneath your feet," Qasim al-Raymi, the wing's military commander, said in an article posted earlier this month on a website used by Islamic activists. Yemen said in January it had killed six regional militant leaders in airstrikes, but al-Qaeda later denied this, and other senior members Sana'a had said were dead, such as deputy leader Saeed al-Shehri, have since re-emerged on websites used by Islamic activists. In an audio tape posted earlier this month, Shehri, a former inmate of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, called for a regional holy war and a blockade of the Red Sea to cut off US shipments to Israel. US intelligence officials has said al-Qaeda's Yemen wing is emerging as the insurgent group's most active and sophisticated cell outside the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has approved more than doubling US funding to train and equip Yemeni security forces to combat al-Qaeda, US defence officials said. In his article, Raymi said US assistance to Yemen had strengthened the militants' popularity among local tribes. Addressing the US government, he wrote: "You united us with our people ... the catastrophe unites those it befalls." The Pentagon has approved $150 million in military assistance to Yemen. Administration officials said the money was approved by Gates and is more than double the amount of US aid to Yemen last year. It will pay for military equipment and training for Yemeni forces. US officials worry that Yemen is becoming the next significant terrorist staging ground, amid ongoing signs that lower-level al-Qaeda operatives have been moving into the country from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to try to persuade Riyadh to lead Gulf Arab donors by example in assisting his impoverished country as it battles an al Qaeda resurgence. Saleh's visit comes ahead of a meeting in Riyadh on Saturday of the wealthy six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to discuss aid to Yemen. Meanwhile, the UN children's fund said yesterday that one hundred and eighty-seven children had been killed since August in the conflict in north Yemen. The report also accused both north Yemen Shi'ite rebels and a pro-government gunmen of using child soldiers. Seventy-one per cent of the 187 were killed in the fighting, while the remainder died from lack of food or medical services, the report added.
