Embassy Bombing in Sana'a

Michael C. Moynihan | September 17, 2008

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.