UK envoy 'escapes suicide bomb'
Posted on Monday, April 26, 2010
A suspected suicide bomber has carried out an attack near the convoy of the British ambassador to Yemen in the capital, Sanaa, reports say.
Ambassador Tim Torlot is safe but one person - not embassy staff - is dead, Reuters news agency quotes a security source as saying.
The UK Foreign Office said it was "urgently" looking into the matter.
The UK and US temporarily closed their embassies in January amid security threats from an al-Qaeda off-shoot.
It came in the wake of the Christmas Day bomb attempt on a US jet flying to Detroit, which was claimed by a Yemeni-based group calling itself al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
There are mounting fears that Yemen is becoming a leading al-Qaeda haven.
Security threats
Mr Torlot was reported to have been on his way back to the embassy from an early morning meeting when the attack happened.
 | YEMEN FACTS  Population: 23.6 million (UN, 2009) Capital: Sanaa Language: Arabic Major religion: Islam Oil exports: $1.5bn/24.5m barrels (Jan-Oct 2009) Income per capita: US $950 (World Bank, 2008)  |
Witnesses say that the suspected bomber was slow in targeting the convoy and he was the only person who died in the blast.
Mr Torlot has been the British ambassador to Yemen since July 2007 and is well accustomed to threats in the region as he was formerly number two at the embassy in Baghdad, the BBC's Christian Fraser in Cairo reports.
Security has been stepped up at Western embassies in Yemen in recent months as the US, Britain and other countries have signalled their intention to play a greater role in helping to bring stability to Yemen, our correspondent adds.
It follows the revelation that the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up the Detroit flight on Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, appeared to have been trained by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
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