By Andrew Hammond DUBAI, July 28 (Reuters) - The rare murder of foreigners kidnapped in north Yemen has given the Yemeni government a jolt over the resurgence of al Qaeda in the troubled Arabian Peninsula country. Last month the bodies of two German women and a South Korean female companion were found after they and six other Westerners were abducted in the northern Saada province near Saudi Arabia in an attack that analysts said bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda. "This is a very disturbing development. It is the first time that foreigners have been kidnapped in Yemen and executed straight away," said Christopher Boucek, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "The situation is much more suggestive of al Qaeda type violence than has been seen elsewhere (in Yemen)." Yemen has blamed rebels of a Shi'ite sect that is battling the Sanaa government, a claim the group has denied and which analysts see as unlikely despite Shi'ite strength in the north. Tribesman disgruntled over marginalisation by the central government have often abducted foreigners, usually tourists, but rarely does it end in deaths. "The kidnapping in Yemen has led to immense embarrassment for the Yemeni government and chaos in the fight against terrorism," said Saeed Thabit, a researcher and political analyst in Sanaa. Despite a large search operation with the help of German and British investigators and government rewards for information, the kidnappers remain at large and the fate of the remaining seized foreigners remains unknown. "The government has saved no effort and security bodies are doing their job on a wide scale. There is cooperation with the Germans and British," Information Minister Hasan al-Lawzi said at a news conference this month. GUANTANAMO SAUDIS IN YEMEN Yemen and U.S. military targeted al Qaeda figures in the impoverished country, the ancestral home of the network's leader Osama bin Laden, after the 9/11 attacks. An unmanned CIA drone fired a missile that killed al Qaeda's leader in Yemen in 2002. But in January Yemeni militants announced they had adopted the name Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and named two Saudis released from Guantanamo Bay as its commanders. Militants under the al Qaeda banner claimed an attack that killed four South Korean tourists in March as well as mortar attacks on foreign embassies and housing compounds last year. Yemen's foreign minister last week downplayed the idea that al Qaeda militants were relocating from Iraq and Afghanistan as "exaggerated" -- yet he did not deny the reports. Rather, he accused al Qaeda, a Sunni militant group, of trying to enflame the Shi'ite rebellion in the north and violence in the south, where secessionist sympathisers have clashed with security forces, to create more destabilisation. Gregory Johnson, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said a jail break by al Qaeda suspects in 2006 seems to mark the beginning of al Qaeda's revival in Yemen. "The current incarnation of al Qaeda in Yemen has more recruits -- and younger recruits -- than ever," he wrote this month. Two Yemenis were among a list of 83 wanted militants issued by Saudi authorities in February. But Boucek said 26 of the men on the Saudi list are believed to be in Yemen and 11 in total are Guantanamo detainees released by Washington to Saudi Arabia who have returned to militancy, information he published after meetings with Saudi officials. The rest are in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, he said. "There is a real fear that the newly-formed al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is taking advantage of conditions in Yemen to prepare for attacks in Saudi Arabia," he wrote in the May issue of periodical CTC Sentinel, which researches militant affairs. SAUDI LINK Neighbouring Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, has said it fears instability in Yemen could allow it to become a launchpad for a revival of a 2003-2006 campaign by al Qaeda militants to destabilise the U.S.-allied ruling Al Saud family. Even if al Qaeda was not behind the killings, they are a sign of the increasing radicalisation in Yemen, analysts say. Hassan Abu Taleb of the Al Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies in Cairo said that despite Saudi fears, its puritanical brand of Sunni Islam had played a key role in creating a fertile environment for al Qaeda in Yemen. "Over the last 20 years Yemen has been a launchpad for al Qaeda elements and some tribes in the centre of the country have blood and close links with al Qaeda elements," he said. "Yemeni judges now go to Saudi Arabia for training and come back filled with Wahhabi thoughts," he added, referring to the austere Saudi school of Islam. Boucek also said that though there was no unified Saudi policy to boost Sunni fundamentalism -- known as Salafism -- in its southern neighbour, Saudi Arabia played a role. "The importation of Salafi extremists, funding of scientific institutes, return of Yemenis from Saudi, and the radicalisation process going on in younger Yemenis have all been problematic and have changed the ideological environment," he said. (Editing by Samia Nakhoul)
An Israeli holds up a placard during a right-wing protest in Jerusalem July 27, 2009 against U.S. President Barack Obama's demand to freeze Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and ...
Women
