06/08/2013 17:31
U.S. personnel evacuated from Yemen after al-Qaeda order to attack is revea
The U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen began evacuating non-essential personnel on Tuesday and urged all U.S. citizens to leave the country, following the revelation that the head of al-Qaeda had ordered the group’s Yemen affiliate to carry out an attack, The Washington Post reported.
Military aircraft carried embassy workers out of the country starting early Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman George Little said in a statement. Military officials did not specify how many U.S. citizens were flown out of the country or where they were taken.
The United States has a major military base in Djibouti, on the nearby Horn of Africa, about 275 miles southwest of Sanaa. The U.S. Navy also deploys ships on a near-constant basis in the Arabian Gulf and Red Sea, both of which border Yemen.
The Pentagon said it was keeping an undisclosed number of military personnel in Yemen to support the U.S. embassy “and monitor the security situation.” A few dozen U.S. Special Operations Forces have been stationed in Yemen since last year to train Yemeni counter-terrorism forces and to help pinpoint targets for U.S. and Yemeni airstrikes against al-Qaeda targets in the country.