September 15th, 2006 Yemen attacks

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September 15th Yemen attacks
Location	Dubba Port and Mareb
Target(s)	oil facilities
Date	September 15, 2006 5:15 am – 5:50 am (UTC+3)
Attack Type	failed suicide car bombing
Fatalities	4 attackers, 1 security guard
Injuries	none reported
Perpetrator(s)	suspected Islamist militants, possibly Al-Qaeda

The September 15th Yemen attacks were a series of attempted attacks on oil facilities in Yemen, carried out by suspected Islamic militants on September 15, 2006. All four attackers and one security guard died during the attacks.

1 Background
2 Dubba Port attack
3 Mareb attack
4 Footnotes
5 External links

[edit] Background

There had been fears of an impending terrorist attack in Yemen since February 2006, when 23 Al Qaeda prisoners escaped from a Yemeni prison. The September 15th attacks came just before the country's Presidential elections. Only days before the attacks, Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued a videotaped threat of attacks on the Persian Gulf and on facilities he blamed for stealing Muslim oil; analysts point to Al Qaeda as the likely perpetrator of the attacks^[1].

[edit] Dubba Port attack

At 5:15 am local time, two attempted suicide bombers drove toward the Dubba Port, reportedly "at great speed", in an attempt to blow up storage tanks containing large amounts of oil. According to a statement by Yemen's Interior Ministry, the driver of the car was wearing a uniform similar to those worn by staff at the facility, and the second driver was dressed in a military uniform. The guards at the port managed to detonate the vehicles before it reached its target. In the resulting blast, one security guard was killed.

[edit] Mareb attack

At 5:50 am, 35 minutes after the first attack, security guards at a refinery in Mareb blew up two cars loaded with explosives. The Interior Ministry statement reported that the vehicles, which were similar to those driven by the facility's staff, ". . . were driven by other suicide bomber terrorists who tried to break into [the facility]". The two attackers were killed; no one else was injured in the attack.