Embassy Bombing in Sana'a

Sixteen people were killed today after a militant group exploded a car bomb in front of the U.S. embassy in Yemen. A group calling itself Islamic Jihad in Yemen claimed responsibility. According to this report, one of the victims was a high school student from Lackawanna, NY who had gone to the country to get married. The Telegraph has more details:

The car exploded some distance from the embassy in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, at a checkpoint manned by security personnel, before gunmen in another car started firing.

The attackers wore police uniforms to try to get through the embassy's perimeter security during a morning shift change.

Four civilians and six members of the police died in the attack, a spokesman for the Yemeni security forces said. The six attackers—one wearing an explosives belt, also died. There were no casualties among US diplomatic staff.

And this interesting detail from the Telegraph story:

The British embassy was attacked with grenades so many times in the 1990s it was moved to a more secure location on a hillside overlooking Sanaa after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Some interesting observations from Eric Trager here.