Security officials confirmed on Tuesday morning that al-Qaeda operatives assassinated al-Baydha deputy governor, Hussein Dayan, in yet another targeted attack.
According to witnesses’ account, Dayan was sprayed with bullets as he stepped out on his residence, ready to go to work. Upon confirming that their target was most definitely dead the militants fled the scene, keen to evade the authorities.
While such attacks have been flurry in Yemen over the past two years, terror militants have so far only targeted military and intelligence officers, never state dignitary.
With al-Qaeda Yemen having quite significantly upped its attacks in the impoverished nation’ southern region, security experts have once again warned that such a clear change in tactics: the assassination of state officials, only underscored the group’s aim to weaken all state institutions ahead of a potential take-over.
Since al-Qaeda quite openly admitted back in 2012 that its ultimate target in Yemen would be to establish an Islamic Caliphate, a base from which to launch all future attacks against its enemies, the idea that the group could be moving toward such goal does not seem too far-fetched. Yemen remembers only too well how al-Qaeda exploited 2011 power vacuum to seize control over large swathes of land in the southern province of Abyan.
As it happens it seems the entire southern Yemeni region is now at risk of a terror take-over.
In a terror assessment report the Interior Ministry confirmed that at least 41 troops had been killed by al-Qaeda in the first quarter of the year, a figure which does not bode well as the country pushes to reform its institutions.