Officials confirmed on Tuesday that an army Colonel was killed by unknown armed militants in the south-eastern province of Hadhramawt in an attack which seems to bear the hallmarks of al-Qaeda.
Although tribesmen have too resorted to violence over the past few weeks in their opposition and condemnation of the state over the death of a prominent local tribal leader, they have opted for acts of sabotage so far and not assassination bid.
According to preliminary reports, Colonel Abdul Ghany Makaleh, who works at the army's economic corporation in Hadhramawt, was attacked by armed men driving a pick-up truck. Severely injured the Colonel was immediately transported to hospital, where unfortunately doctors could not save him.
Plagued by instability Yemen has been unable so far to prevent terror militants from running targeted assassinations and drive-by killings against its officials. Having managed to infiltrate tribal ranks by exploiting resentment against a fragile central government, al-Qaeda has played Yemen power vacuum as well as benefited from rugged terrain. By directly targeting Yemen’s military and intelligence services, al-Qaeda has aimed to not only instil fear but always disrupt Yemen anti-terror efforts.
Even though Yemen President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi has aligned his counter-terror strategy with Washington, to the extent that he opened Yemen’ s airspace to US drones, al-Qaeda has grown in influence.
As per noted by Katherine Zimmerman, senior analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, "The al-Qaeda human network is an extremely important component of the group's resilience and effectiveness, but it is not the sole component. The concept of leaderless jihad minimizes the significance of the core al-Qaeda group, emphasizing decentralization and bottom-up operational initiative instead.”