Closed for Business

“The United States has closed its embassy in Sanaa citing threats from an al-Qaeda group. The US embassy posted a message on its website on Sunday saying it was closed ‘in response to ongoing threats by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to attack American interests in Yemen’. It did not say when it would reopen. Embassy officials would not comment if there was a specific threat, but Hakim al-Masmari, the editor-in-chief of the Yemen Post newspaper, told Al Jazeera that the closure can only mean ‘that they believe al-Qaeda threat is very serious’. ‘If you look at the recent video tapes from al-Qaeda, they clearly mention they have no enemy in Yemen except the US interests in Yemen. They warned the Yemeni soldiers against helping the Americans in any such way,’ al-Masmari said. ‘We really expect attacks on the US interests in the next month by al-Qaeda.’ The US move came shortly after the British government announced plans to join the United States in funding an ‘anti-terrorist’ force in Yemen.”