Eighteen Kuwaiti activists detained by Israel returned home on Wednesday EPA

Officials in Israel say they have released about 700 activists seized from the Gaza aid flotilla and sent them for deportation.

The hundreds of activists detained on the boats and diverted to Israel have all been released for deportation, said Yron Zamir, a prisons authority
spokesman.

Zamir said all of the people had been taken to Ben Gurion airport or the Jordanian border.

Yehuda Weinstein, Israel’s attorney general, said Israel decided not to prosecute any of them, writing in an order on Wednesday that “keeping them here would do more damage to the country’s vital interests than good”.

Palestinian-Israelis detained

Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Jerusalem, said that four Palestinian-Israelis remained in prison.

Earlier on Wednesday, more than 100 of the activists, mostly from Arab countries, were driven by buses across the Allenby Bridge into Jordan.

Eighteen Kuwaiti activists detained by Israel returned home on Wednesday, accusing Israeli troops of having opened fire without warning.

The activists were flown home aboard a government plane from Jordan after crossing the border.

“Israeli commandos started shooting from the air without warning,” said Mubarak al-Mutawa, a lawyer who was on the main vessel, the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara.

“They killed a number of volunteers even before landing aboard the ship,” he said on arrival at Kuwait Airport.

Israel says its commandos opened fire in self defence when they encountered resistance from activists wielding metal rods and chairs, and released pictures which appeared to show a handful of soldiers being beaten and clubbed by dozens of activists.

‘Outrageous attack’

The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, condemned Israel for its “outrageous attack”.

The 47-member body passed a resolution on Wednesday establishing a factfinding mission into possible international law violations.

Authorities said 682 people from more than 30 countries had been on board the six ships that tried to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The activists included hundreds of Turks, four of whom were killed.

Turkey has warned it will cut off diplomatic ties with Israel if its citizens killed and injured in the Gaza flotilla raid are not returned by Wednesday night.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, said 210 Turkish nationals were scheduled to be flown to Istanbul from Israel on Turkish planes, while it is believed around 20 injured people will return via Ankara, on ambulance planes.

Differing accounts

Sherine Tadros, Al Jazeera’s correspondent reporting from Beersheva in southern Israel, said that while nine people have been confirmed killed, no information had been made public about their identities.

The activists were killed when Israeli troops, using helicopters and dinghies, stormed the Mavi Marmara, the lead vessel of the six-ship convoy dubbed the Freedom Flotilla, on Monday.

Activists’ accounts of what happened contradict Israeli explanations of the raid.

Huseyin Tokalak, the captain of one of the seized ships who was freed on Tuesday, told a news conference in Istanbul that an Israeli navy ship threatened to sink his vessel before troops boarded and trained their guns on him and his crew.

“They pointed two guns to the head of each of us,” Tokalak said.

Others said that the soldiers had opened fire even after passengers had raised the white flag.

Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, who was on board the Mavi Marmara and was released into Jordan on Wednesday morning, said the size of the Israeli attack surprised the ship’s passengers.

“The Israeli assault took those of us on the ship by complete surprise,” Vall said.

“We saw about 30 war vessels surrounding this ship, and helicopters attacking with very luminous bombs.

“More troops came and immediately opened fire, and killed people on the ship without any distinction.”

The UN Security Council has called for “a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards” into the Israeli raid.

Another vessel

As a new standoff with another aid ship loomed, David Cameron, the British prime minister, said Monday’s pre-dawn Israeli attack was “completely unacceptable”.

Israel remains defiant about the raid and says it is ready to intercept another aid ship, the Rachel Corrie, that organisers of the Freedom Flotilla planned to send to the Gaza Strip next week.

Accusing international critics of “hypocrisy,” Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, defended the seizure of the aid ships on Wednesday.

In a televised address to the nation, he said he would continue to blockade Gaza, saying that to lift the embargo would turn it into a base for Iranian missiles that would threaten both Israel and Europe.

Amid the international condemnation, Egypt said it was opening the Rafah border it shares with Gaza, to allow in humanitarian aid after a request from the governing Hamas Palestinian faction.

Egypt, in co-ordination with Israel, has rarely opened the border since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 from forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

Abbas meanwhile criticised Israel’s actions as being “stupid, terrorist and ugly”.

Speaking in Bethlehem, Abbas said that “the way to seek peace has to start by Israel lifting the siege on Gaza, freezing all settlements without preconditions, and the recognition of international references”.

US relations

The bloodshed on Monday also put Israel’s tense ties with the US under further strain and placed under scrutiny the relationship between the allies.

Al Jazeera’s Anita McNaught, reporting from Istanbul, said Erdogan, in his speech, “mentioned the unmentionable, saying that Israel acts because it has powerful friends”.

The US has, thus far, refused to condemn the Israeli raid, with Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, telling reporters in Washington DC that “the situation from our perspective is very difficult and requires careful, thoughtful responses from all concerned”.

Clinton called on the Israeli government to ease the blockade of Gaza, saying that the “situation in Gaza is unsustainable and unacceptable”.

“Israel’s legitimate security needs must be met just as the Palestinian’s legitimate needs for sustained humanitarian assistance and regular access to reconstruction materials must also be assured,” she said.

]]> http://www.awakensource.com/2010/06/02/israel-deports-gaza-aid-activists/feed/ 0 http://www.awakensource.com/2010/06/02/turkey-demands-return-of-citizens/ http://www.awakensource.com/2010/06/02/turkey-demands-return-of-citizens/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 21:56:45 +0000 Khattab http://www.awakensource.com/?p=1025

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There have been angry protests in Turkey against Israel's raid on the flotilla [AFP

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, also called for an international commission into the raid on the convoy of six ships, which reportedly killed at least four Turkish nationals.

“We have clearly stated that we would review our ties with Israel if all Turks not released by the end of the day,” Davutoglu told a news conference.

Turkey has sent three planes to retrieve hundreds of activists detained following Monday’s raid in international waters, which left nine people dead.

Legal action considered

Davutoglu said 210 Turks were scheduled to be flown to Istanbul from Israel on Turkish planes later on Wednesday, while it is believed around 20 injured people will return via Ankara, Turkey’s capital, on ambulance planes.

The foreign minister added that two Turkish citizens who were in serious condition will remain in Israeli hospitals with a Turkish doctor.

“We will not leave them to the mercy of anyone,” he said.

Davutoglu added Turkey was ready to normalise ties with Israel if it lifted its blockade on Gaza, saying “it was time calm replaces anger”.

His comments came a day a day after Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, called for Israel to be “punished” for its “bloody massacre”.

“It is no longer possible to cover up or ignore Israel’s lawlessness. It is time for the international community to say ‘enough is enough’,” he said.

Relations between Turkey and Israel deteriorated rapidly following the deadly raid, with most of the bloodshed occurring on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish-flagged ship carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists.

State media reported on Wednesday that Turkey’s justice ministry is considering legal action against Israel.

Officials are looking into both domestic and international law to see what action might be undertaken after Monday’s operation in international waters, a report by the Anatolia news agency said.

Thousands of Turks staged two days of protests across the country denouncing the action.

Jewish backlash fears

Some members of Turkey’s Jewish community say they fear that anger over the flotilla deaths will lead to a rise in anti-Semitism in the nation.

“We are definitely worried, because that [the anger in Turkey] can turn very easily to anti-Semitism,” Ivo Molinas, the editor in chief of the weekly Istanbul-based publication Shalom, said.

“The rhetoric used by the prime minister has been very radical,” Molinas, a member of the 20,000-member Jewish community residing in Turkey, added.

Turkey says it has beefed up security to protect its Jewish minority, while Israel has ordered families of Israeli diplomats out of Turkey.

Besir Atalay, the Turkish interior minister, said security has been stepped up at 20 points alone in Istanbul, which has several synagogues and centres.

Turkey became Israel’s chief regional ally when the two signed a military co-operation deal in 1996.

But relations have soured since Israel’s devastating war on Gaza last year amid criticism from Erdogan’s government.

At least nine people, mostly Iraqi soldiers and police, have been killed and another 24 wounded after a series of attacks on security checkpoints across the capital Baghdad.

In the apparently co-ordinated attacks, reports said armed men used silenced weapons to fire on six checkpoints early on Monday, while bombs were planted at three others.

A roadside bomb, set off as a police patrol passed by, also killed two civilians.

The attacks - all executed around dawn - showed a new tactic being used by fighters in the country, the Reuters news agency cited an interior ministry spokesman as saying.

“This was a message to us that they can attack us in different parts of the city at the same time because they have cells everywhere,” he said.

At least eight police officers were also wounded in the western city of Falluja on Monday after bombs were planted outside their homes.

Rising violence

The attacks come just two days after reports that the Iraqi defence ministry was considering building a “security fence”around the capital as a way of curbing violence and controlling the movements of anti-government fighters.

Access to the city would be controlled by eight checkpoints, and construction could be completed by mid-2011, reports from local broadcaster Al Iraqiyya Television said.

Violence across Iraq has dropped significantly since 2006 and 2007, when the country’s sectarian conflict was at its height. But attacks have been on the rise in recent months, particular in Baghdad.

National parliamentary elections on March 7left no clear winner, and continuing wrangling by political blocs to form a governable coalition have left an atmosphere of instability in the county.

‘Backlash’

Security forces have in recent weeks also made a series of arrests of high-profile members of the al-Qaeda in Iraq group, Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Baghdad, said.

“Certainly, authorities were predicting a backlash against that, we had seen a number of attacks recently, but this is the most serious in terms, not only of the death toll, but of the sense of co-ordination,” he said.

“It would be a very strong answer, if indeed it is an al-Qaeda group [behind Monday's strikes], that despite the fact that their leadership is gone, they are still capable of carrying out this type of attack.”

Police said three of checkpoints fired at on Monday were in the west of Baghdad, with two more in the east and one in the south. The checkpoints that were bombed were in the south and southeast of the capital.

Full Article

Yemen has boosted troop numbers in three provinces to tackle a growing al-Qaeda challenge

Yemeni fighter jets have attacked the home of a suspected leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the military steps up pressure on the group.

A Yemeni tribal source said a number of people had been killed in Wednesday’s air raids in Erq al-Shabwan village in Maarib province, about 130km east of the capital Sanaa.

The source said the wave of raids, which began in the morning, targeted the house of Ayed al-Shabwani, one of six al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leaders who, according to the Yemen government, were killed in an air attack last week.

A military official, who would not be named, said there had been three attacks on the house and one on an orange grove near the village where the authorities think al-Shabwani had built a safe haven for dozens of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula members.

The official said that there had been a large deployment of government forces at the city of Maarib, about five kilometres from Erq al-Shabwan.

Orange grove targeted

During the afternoon, witnesses said, jets twice fired missiles at the orange grove and afterwards continued to fly in the area.

Mohamed Vall, reporting from the southern city of Aden, said quoting the Yemeni army website that one al-Qaeda member was killed in a separate clash with security forces in Lahij, about 50km north of Aden.

“The fighting took place after a government vehicle was hijacked by al-Qaeda and there was an exchange of fire between the two sides in which the member of the group was killed,” he said.

The clashes come just days after Yemen said it had killed six suspected leaders, including al-Shabwani, of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Saada, a province north of Saana.

Describing Wednesday’s air assault in Maarib, our correspondent said: “[The air raids] started around noon. The government said they targeted the home and farm of al-Shabwani.”

“There were four raids in that area. The government said there was an exchange of fire and that al-Qaeda members were armed with anti-aircraft weapons, which they tried to use against the government aircraft. But the government did not talk about any al-Qaeda casualties.”

In this context, our correspondent noted that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had rejected the Yemeni government’s claim about al-Shabwani’s death, and that the government had not commented on al-Qaeda’s denial.

Airline plot connection

Yemen is under US pressure to clamp down on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the December 25 bid to blow up a US flight from Amsterdam as it landed in Detroit.

Wednesday’s air raid comes a day after the United Nations Security Council added Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to its list of outlawed organisations.

Two of the group’s purported leaders, Nasser al-Wahayshi and Qasim al-Raymi, face new restrictions after the move by the Security Council’s sanctions committee.

The sanctions against the two men, who were among 23 fighters who escaped from a jail in Sanaa in 2006, include worldwide freezes on their assets and travel bans.

“Today’s actions strengthen international efforts to degrade the capabilities of AQAP,” Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, said on Tuesday, referring to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was formed in January 2009 after the merger of groups in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

It has since set up bases inside Yemen and has been blamed for the suicide attack on South Korean tourists in March 2009 and an attempt to assassinate the Saudi deputy interior minister across the border.

The UN committee made its decision shortly after the US state department added the Yemen-based group to it list of proscribed organisations.

“We are determined to eliminate AQAP’s ability to execute violent attacks and to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat their networks,” Philip Crowley, a state department spokesman, said.

The Yemeni military is fighting al-Qaeda, Houthi rebels, and a separatist movement

A group of Muslim leaders have said Yemenis have a religious duty to resist foreign military intervention in the country.

“In the event of any foreign party insisting on hostilities against, an assault on, or military or security intervention in Yemen, then Islam requires all its followers to pursue jihad,” a statement signed by 150 clerics on Thursday said.

Foreign governments have voiced increasing concern about the situation in Yemen since an attempted attack on a US-bound airliner, after which al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed it had armed the alleged bomber.

On Wednesday, Carl Levin, the chairman of the US senate armed services committee, said that Washington should use drone attacks, air raids or covert operations against al-Qaeda fighters in the country.

“Most options ought to be on the table,” short of invasion by US forces, the Democrat senator said.

The US and Britain have announced plans to fund Yemen’s counter-terrorism police force, but Barack Obama, the US president, has explicitly ruled out sending in troops.

Verdict ‘resonates’

Mohamed Vall, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, said that the religious leaders’ decision to oppose any miltary intervention would carry great weight in the country.

“In a highly conservative, highly religious society like Yemen, it is the word of the clerics and not that of the politicians that really resonates among the masses. And today the clerics of Yemen have announced their verdict,” Vall said.

The clerics said that their opinion was in line with that of most Yemenis and the Sana’a government, while also criticising the killing of foreigners in an apparent allusion to suspected al-Qaeda attacks.

The Yemeni government, which is also fighting a rebel group in the north of the country, and a secessionist movement in the south, has said it is engaged in an “open war” to clear al-Qaeda fighters from its territory.

“The war security forces launched against al-Qaeda elements is open whenever or wherever we find these elements,” a government news website reported on Thursday, quoting an unnamed security source.

It said the source had also warned Yemenis against “hiding any al-Qaeda elements”.

Sana’a has repeatedly denied that it will require foreign intervention to help it defeat the movement, an amalgamation of groups from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

“Yemen is not Afghanistan, nor Pakistan, where terrorists constantly launch attacks while the authorities try to respond,” Ali Anisi, Yemen’s head of national security, said on Wednesday.

“Here, we anticipate the threat. Yemen is not a hideout for the terrorists and will never be.”

‘Repressive government’

Robert Grenier, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad and chief of the Iraq Issues Group, told Al Jazeera: “One of the difficulties that [the Americans] see in Yemen is, as we see in many places, is unrepresentative, corrupt and repressive government.

“At the end of the day, the only real solution to the problem of terrorism is to have responsible government, with the willingness and the ability to control its own territory.

“There are many who are inclined to view the Ali Abdullah Salehs [president of Yemen] of the world as American puppets. Well, in fact, maybe unfortunately, it is far from that. … [However], there aren’t really many good alternatives.”

Yemen has insisted that it is making advances against al-Qaeda, citing air raids in December that killed more than 60 people and a string of reported arrests of suspected al-Qaeda figures.

However, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has used the air raids to encourage anti-American feeling, claiming that they were carried out by US warplanes.

There is little Israeli popularity among the public in Jordan

A bomb has exploded near a convoy of cars carrying Israeli diplomats in Jordan, without causing injuries.

The incident occurred close to the Allenby Bridge that links Jordan and the Israeli occupied Palestinian West Bank at about 5pm (1500GMT) on Thursday, Israeli army radio said.

Danny Nevo, Israel’s ambassador to Jordan, was not in any of the vehicles that were travelling from Amman, the Jordanian capital, at the time, Israeli officials said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

“While cars, including two Israeli Embassy cars, were travelling near the town of Naur on the road between Amman and the Jordan Valley a bomb exploded without causing casualties or damage. The cars were not damaged by the blast,” Nabil Sharif, the information minister, said.

Jordanian officials said that they were investigating the incident.

Neighbourly relations

Al Jazeera’s Nisreen al-Shamyleh, at the site of the attacks, said: “This took place near the King Hussein Bridge, also called Allenby in Israel, on the Jordanian side.

“Right now security is heavy in this area.

“Security personnel and police are on the road trying to identify the explosive material. There is some damage to the road.”

Al-Shamyleh said it could have implications for relations between the two nations if it was found that the Israeli convoy was the target of the attack.

“What it means is diplomats are being watched. People know their movements and to a certain extent know how to target them. So it has implications for Israeli diplomats’ safety,” she said.

Al-Shamyleh added that it was unknown what kind of explosives or bomb was used as yet.

Palestinian sympathy

Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 – the second Arab state to do so after Egypt.

However, the treaty is widely rejected by the Jordanian population. Up to 60 per cent of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin.

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Jerusalem, said: “Relations have been cool at best, hostile at worst since the peace treaty was signed just over 15 years ago.

“Obviously there is a lot of sympathy and empathy in Jordan with the Palestinian people in the occupied territories.

“I think the point at which relations really started to cool was as people in Jordan really saw that no progress was being made in efforts to have a peace treaty between Israel and Palestinians.

“Then, relations hit an all-time low with the Israeli crackdown on the Palestinian uprising which began in 2000, and since then the Israeli seige on Gaza and the war on Gaza just over year ago.

“In a recent opinion poll in Jordan not a single person interviewed gave Israel a favourable rating or said they were willing to accept Israel or engage with it in any way.”

The Allenby/King Hussein Bridge is 50km west of Amman.

Clashes broke out between the activists and police in El-Arish on Tuesday night

George Galloway, the British MP leading the Viva Palestina international aid convoy to the Gaza Strip, has been declared ‘person non grata’ by the Egyptian government and deported from the country.

The politician was picked up by Egyptian officials at the Rafah border crossing on Friday and driven to Cairo, the capital, where he was placed on a flight back to London.

On arriving at Heathrow airport, in the UK capital, Galloway said: “It’s always been a badge of honour to be deported by a tin-pot dictator and that’s what happened this morning.

“Having crossed the border from Gaza into Egypt … my friend and I were bundled into a car, 25 officers, accepting no dissuasion, drove us straight to the airport, basically forced us onto the plane.”

‘Incitement’

Galloway said that at the steps of the plane a representative of the foreign ministry in Egypt had told him he had been declared ‘persona non grata,’ was being deported and was not welcome to return to Egypt.

The Respect Party MP has been vocal in his criticism of Egyptian authorities in recent days after their decision not to allow the convoy of about 200 vehicles to arrive in Egypt through the port at Nuweiba.

Cairo insisted that the aid be sent back through Syria and then by ferry to the port of El-Arish on the Mediterranean.

Egypt’s foreign ministry later issued a statement on Friday confirming Galloway had been declared ‘persona non grata’ and would not be allowed to return to the country, accusing him of incitement over his criticism of the government.

An Egyptian police officer maintained that security personnel had only escorted Galloway for his own protection.

Arrests ordered

Seven other members of the Viva Palestinian convoy have also been ordered arrested after being accused of inciting riots in El-Arish.

The decision by the attorney-general in North Sinai means the activists could be detained after passing through the Rafah border crossing from Gaza.

It was not clear if they were in Egyptian custody on Friday.

Late on Tuesday, more than 50 people were wounded during a clash between Egyptian authorities and international members of the convoy.

The protests were sparked by an Egyptian decision to allow 139 vehicles to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing, but requiring a remaining 59 vehicles to pass via Israel.

Afterwards, clashes between Egyptian security forces and Palestinians waiting for the aid convoy led to the death of one Egyptian policeman.

Israel and Egypt have severely restricted travel to and from the Gaza Strip since Hamas seized power there in June 2007, after winning Palestinian legislative elections in 2006.

The blockade currently allows only very basic supplies into Gaza.

The siege has severely restricted essential supplies and placed Gazans in a dire situation, made worse by Israel’s military assault last winter that reduced much of the territory to ruins.

The shield has completed final tests during which it shot down multiple rockets

Israel has completed final testing of a short-range missile defence system that could nullify a key threat from opposition groups in the Gaza Strip after its scheduled full deployment in June.

The Iron Dome system will be used outside the Strip and has already successfully shot down salvos, similar to Katyusha rockets, in testing a defence official said on Wednesday.

“Our plan is to be operational by the mid-point of 2010,” the official said.

The state of the art system, which was designed by a government-owned defence firm, could eventually be placed along Israel’s borders with the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.

Southern Israel has suffered thousands of missile strikes by groups in the besieged Gaza Strip during the past decade. Such rocket fire was a key reason for its three-week offensive on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip that ended last January.

Ease fears

Hezbollah, the Shia group which controls large areas of southern Lebanon and opposes Israel, is said to have more than 40,000 rockets.

Placing the defence shield along its borders with the occupied West Bank would ease security fears, removing one reason for Israeli control there.

“Making Iron Dome operational will transform Israel’s diplomatic and security situation on the northern and southern fronts,” Pinhas Buchris, the defence ministry’s director general, said.

Shlomo Dror, is defence ministry spokesman, told Al Jazeera: “In the future it will provide more security for people living around Gaza and all over Israel.

“Its very import for is to find some kind of solution with the Palestinians in the West Bank … that will enable Israel to take some steps towards the Palestinians after having [greater] measures to protect Israelis.”

Multi-layered defence

However, Dror earlier told reporters that the system will not provide 100 per cent protection against rocket attacks.

The Iron Dome uses small radar-guided missiles to target small rockets and mortar bombs within a 5km and 70km range.

Israel already has a long-range missile defence system and is planning to develop a medium-range system in coming years.

Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but currently maintaining a blockade on the region.

Its offensive there at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 saw about 1,3000 Gazans killed, while 13 Israelis died due to the conflict.

The impetus behind the Iron Dome project was Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah, during which the Shia group fired about 4,000 rockets into the north of the country.

" the rightist government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely gearing up for a massive attack on Gaza"

Tel Aviv is conducting war games in the Negev desert, in what appears to be preparation for a new offensive on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

An Israeli TV channel reported the military drills on Thursday, saying the rightist government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely gearing up for a massive attack on Gaza shortly after the anniversary of the deadly Gaza onslaught last year.

It further revealed that Tel Aviv plans to occupy the entire coastal enclave this time to compensate for the failure to overthrow Hamas, the democratically elected ruler of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army is said to be practicing to forestall the mistakes which led to the deaths of several of its soldiers during the last offensive, the poor handling of which cost Tel Aviv severe criticism at home and forced senior army officials to resign.

The report added that Israeli tanks have been equipped with a new system able to identify friendly units operating in the battlefield — even when they are among civilians.

The 22-day Israeli offensive last year saw weeks of relentless air, land and sea incursions against the Palestinians in Gaza. It left more than 1,400 people, including hundreds of women and children, dead.

It also devastated a large part of the infrastructure in the impoverished coastal sliver which has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007.

Israel has recently stepped up saber-rattling against the Palestinians in Gaza, with Israeli planes dropping thousands of leaflets across Gaza in December, urging Gazans against cooperating with the resistance fighters based in the region, and threatening a new attack.

Yemen's army is fighting a resurgent al-Qaeda on its territory

A Nigerian man accused of the attempted bombing of a US-bound plane on Christmas Day was recruited by al-Qaeda in London and met a radical American Muslim cleric in Yemen, a top Yemeni official has said.

Addressing a news conference on Thursday, Rashad al-Alimi, Yemen’s deputy prime minister for defence and security, said: “The information provided to us is that Umar Farouk [Abdulmutallab] joined al-Qaeda in London.”

Al-Alimi said that Abdulmutallab had also met with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim preacher, during his time in Yemen, referring to an English-speaking cleric linked to a gunman who ran amok in a US army base in Texas in November, killing 13 people.

A Yemeni security official has said al-Awlaki was believed to have later died in a strike on al-Qaeda fighters last month.

Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said last week that it had trained and equipped Abdulmutallab, 23, for the plane plot.

‘No evidence’

Earlier this week, in a statement to the UK parliament, Alan Johnson, the country’s interior minister, said: “As has been widely reported, Abdulmutallab attended University College London (UCL) between 2005 and 2008, where he completed a degree in engineering.

“During this time he was known to the Security Service but not as somebody engaged in violent extremism.

“His family and friends have stated their belief that he turned to this during his time in Yemen.”

On Thursday, a spokesperson for UCL said: “We would like to reiterate that there is absolutely no evidence at this stage to suggest that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was radicalised at UCL.

“We are currently providing all assistance to the authorities, and are setting up a full independent review of Mr Abdulmutallab’s time here.”

Mohamed Vall, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, said: “There are two major points that he [al-Alimi] made today that shed new light on the incident.

“One of them is that he [Abdulmutallab] was not recruited in Yemen, and the other is that he did not bring these explosives from Yemen, he brought them from Nigeria.

“This of course takes some of the burden from the Yemenis and takes it to London.”

Vall said that the international focus on Yemen was of increasing concern to the government in Sana’a.

He said: “There are fears that if there is more and more interference from the outside world, that could make a situation that is already fragile in this country … worse.”

Intervention rejected

Yemen, which is trying to fight a resurgent al-Qaeda on its territory, launched an operation this week to root out al-Qaeda fighters who they said were behind threats that forced several Western embassies to close on Sunday.

Last week, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, said the UK planned to join the US in funding an “anti-terrorist” force in Yemen.

Brown said he would hold a meeting in London on January 28 to discuss how to counter radicalisation in Yemen.

Abubakr al-Qirbi, Yemen’s foreign minister, whose country is also facing a Houthi uprising in the north and simmering separatist sentiment in the south, has rejected direct foreign intervention.

“We think this is the priority and the responsibility of our security forces and the army,” al-Qirbi told CNN, the US broadcaster.

Asked by CNN whether Yemen would accept direct US intervention, al-Qirbi said: “No, I don’t think we will accept that.

“I think the US, as well, have learned from Afghanistan and Iraq and other places that direct intervention can be self-defeating.”

Al-Qaeda ’spared’

Al-Qirbi said there were about 200 to 300 al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

“I think our thought was that maybe we should spare al-Qaeda in the last year because of the confrontation in the south and with the Houthis.

“But al-Qaeda took advantage of that,” Qirbi said, adding that al-Qaeda had tried to make inroads with northern fighters and southern separatists.

Meanwhile, gunmen shot dead two Yemeni soldiers in attack on a police station in Aden, the former capital of south Yemen, witnesses and security sources said on Thursday.

The gunmen were believed to be suspects wanted in criminal cases, an independent Yemeni news website reported, quoting a security official.