Al Qaeda or no? Here’s the thing. Ordinarily I would say this fits al Qaeda MO – as the article points out, they have struck at oil facilities in the past. However, with the Spanish tourist bombing, AQ-Yemen raised the bar for attacks dramatically. Going back to a simple pipeline bombing doesn’t really make sense. Secondly, the Yemeni government has been communally punishing tribes in this area for a while now – not necessarily without reason, as they were known to have harbored AQ leader Mohammad Hamdi al Ahdal, and have been accused of harboring members of the reconstituted AQ cell involved in the Spanish tourist bombing.
Updates to come from Yemen Press.
DPA not sure.
Tribesmen blow up oil pipeline in Yemen
Nov 5, 2007, 8:32 GMT
Sana’a – Tribesmen blew up an oil pipeline in north-central Yemen on Monday, but there were no reports of casualties, police officials said.
The explosion occurred in Marib province, about 190 kilometres north-east of the capital Sana’a.
Security officials told Deutsche-Presse Agentur dpa that the blast in the Serwah region of Marib, where the pipeline runs to the Red Sea exporting facility of Rass Essa, was the result of an explosive device.
It was not immediately clear whether the attackers were linked to the terror group al-Qaeda which has an active presence in the province.
Disgruntled tribesmen have frequently targeted the pipeline in the past few years to try to force the government to improve services to remote and impoverished areas.
Marib was also the scene of a deadly al-Qaeda-linked attack on a Spanish tourist convoy last July which left eight Spanish tourists dead.
In September 2006, two al-Qaeda suicide attackers blew up an explosives-laden pickup in the Safer oil refinery in Marib.
Reuters says probably not.
Yemeni tribesmen blow up oil pipeline
SANAA, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Yemeni tribesmen blew up a pipeline that carries crude oil to a Red Sea export facility on Monday but export operations were unaffected, security and oil officials said.
A security official said the bombing did not appear to be linked to Islamist militants, according to preliminary investigations.
Yemen is a small producer of oil with an output of around 330,000 barrels per day.
The Rub' al Khali, or the "Empty Quarter" in English, is one of the largest sand deserts in the world, encompassing most of the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula, including southern Saudi Arabia, and areas of Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The desert covers some 250,000 square miles and is one of the most inhospitable places on earth, and entirely uninhabitable.
The Empty Quarter 