Yemeni Forces Wage Battle in Search for Terror Suspects

Yemeni forces trained and equipped with U.S. support fought a battle in the American-led war on terrorism Tuesday, engaging armed tribesmen in a bid to capture suspected members of Osama bin Laden’s terror network, government officials and tribal sources said.

Tanks, helicopters and artillery pounded mountain villages and hillsides in what appeared to be the most serious military operation yet in an Arab country in search of suspects allegedly connected to Al Qaeda, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Tribal sources said four tribesmen and eight soldiers were killed in the fighting, the first military action outside Afghanistan in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.

Security officials in Marib province, 100 miles east of Sana, the capital, said the five suspects apparently were able to hide or escape the barrage and special troops who moved in for a search.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday that Washington had been concerned about the presence of Al Qaeda members in Yemen but that the United States had no involvement in the operation.

“There are obviously a number of countries that have active Al Qaeda cells, and Yemen is one,” Rumsfeld said after a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in Brussels. He also cited Sudan and Somalia.

Security officials would not comment on casualties. The tribal sources said that 22 people were wounded, some of them soldiers, and that several small homes used by tribesmen to fire on the government troops were destroyed.

After two hours of bombardment against the tribe in the morning, special forces successfully entered the area--some of them dropped from helicopters--but did not find the suspects, the security officials in Marib said.

However, government forces arrested a number of tribesmen suspected of hiding the wanted men, an Interior Ministry official said. He did not say how many. All the officials and tribal sources spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Interior Ministry official said that special forces were conducting a wide search operation in Marib and in adjacent Shabwa province and that security had also been tightened in the provinces of Hadhramaut, Abyan, and Lahij, three strongholds of Islamic militants in eastern Yemen.

Bin Laden, whose father was born in the Hadhramaut region, is the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. His Al Qaeda network is believed to exist in dozens of countries.

The United States believes that Al Qaeda was also behind the October 2000 attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen’s southern port of Aden, which killed 17 American sailors.

Although no U.S. operatives participated in Tuesday’s operation, Yemeni authorities are apprising American officials of the ongoing search for the suspects, another Interior Ministry official said, also on condition of anonymity.

The special forces unit was the first to graduate from a U.S.-funded program to train and equip Yemen’s security forces.

Sources in the Marib region familiar with the special forces’ operation said the bombardment came after the tribe refused in two days of negotiations to hand over at least five men suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda.