Terrorism, Yemen | featured news

At least 13 soldiers and 13 suspected al-Qaida militants were killed in an attack on an army base in the southern province of Abyan on Friday.

The CIA thwarted an ambitious plot by Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials said.

Al-Qaeda's Yemeni offshoot confirmed the killing of U.S.-born militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki late last month.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who arrived in Kabul on Saturday, also said the American focus had narrowed to capturing or killing key leaders of the terrorist group in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

Yemen's Defense Ministry said the military had killed 21 al Qaeda "terrorists" on Saturday in the southern Abyan province, whose capital, Zinjibar was seized by Islamist militants last month.

Hundreds of Islamic militants solidified their control over a town in southern Yemen Sunday after seizing tanks in clashes with fleeing soldiers, military officials said. Opponents of the country’s embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accused him of allowing the militants to freely seize Zinjibar in a bid to stoke Western fears that al-Qaida would take over the country if he responded to demands by demonstrators to step down.

The wealth of information pulled from Osama bin Laden's compound has reinforced the belief that he played a strong role in planning and directing attacks by Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, senior U.S. officials said Friday.

At least 40 people were killed and 90 wounded in an explosion at an ammunition factory in Yemen on Monday, medical and security officials said.

A Saudi bombmaker believed to be working with al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing is a key suspect in the parcel bomb plot against the United States, a U.S. official said on Saturday.

The flight ban was announced in response to the attempted terrorist attack allegedly carried out by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.