Deadly Training Ground

The car bombing outside the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, which killed 16 people Wednesday, is the deadliest single terrorist attack on a U.S. government facility since September 11—and, say U.S. counter-terrorism officials, it is a powerful reminder that Al Qaeda and its allies remain a lethal force on the Arabian Peninsula.

No Americans were hurt in the early morning attack in which militants—armed with AK-47s and rocket propelled grenades—sought to penetrate the heavily fortified compound that surrounds the U.S. Embassy in Sana. But a subsequent gun battle with Yemeni security forces and an explosion set off minutes later by suicide bombers, killed more people than any terror attack aimed at a U.S. government or military installation outside Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, U.S. officials said.

"The answer is yes. This is the largest attack against a U.S. facility since 9/11," a U.S. counter-terrorism official (who asked not to identified by name) e-mailed NEWSWEEK in response to questions. That grim milestone could undercut claims of overall success in the war on terror. Indeed, Yemen—as much as Pakistan and Afghanistan—remains a country where U.S. counter-terrorism efforts have been hampered by repeated setbacks.

For the past year, U.S. counter-terrorism officials have complained about Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's practice of capturing and then releasing Al Qaeda operatives—including Jamal al-Badawi, a key figure in the October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 sailors. At the same time, Al Qaeda militants have escalated bombings and other attacks. Last spring, the U.S. embassy evacuated all non-emergency personnel after a series of bombings and mortar fire attacks on the embassy, a housing complex for foreigners, and a Canadian oil company facility.

Although there is no definitive proof identifying the perpetrators behind Wednesday's attack—a previously unknown splinter group called the "Organization of Islamic Jihad" claimed responsibility in messages to news agencies—U.S. and Yemeni counter-terrorism experts said they had little doubt as to who was responsible. "This has all the earmarks of Al Qaeda," said Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who spent years investigating the U.S.S. Cole bombing and other Al Qaeda operations in Yemen. "It indicates a new level of sophistication that we haven't seen by Al Qaeda in Yemen for a while. It also suggests some new expertise—either by people who were in jail and were released or people who have come back from Iraq or were trained in Somalia."

The attack began at 9:15 a.m., when a vehicle carrying gunmen, dressed in the uniforms of the Yemeni security forces, drove up to a Yemeni-manned checkpoint outside the U.S. Embassy. The gunmen engaged the security forces in a bloody gun battle that appears to have been designed to distract from a second vehicle that approached the embassy moments later. The second vehicle, carrying suicide bombers, made it through the checkpoint to a second ring of concrete blocks and then detonated a powerful bomb. (The attack was reminiscent of the last major Al Qaeda assault on a U.S. facility—the December 2004 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in which eight people died.)