SANAA — Yemen's Defense Ministry said on Friday it had regained full control of its Sanaa military compound a day after a militant attack that killed 52 people, and an al Qaida-affiliated group claimed responsibility for the assault.
Troops killed 11 militants in the violence triggered by a suicide bomber and gunmen wearing army uniforms, the ministry said. Also among the dead were medics from Germany, Vietnam, India and the Philippines, and 167 people were wounded.
It was the worst such attack in 18 months, heightening international concerns about threats emanating from a state that shares a long border with Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, and flanks key international shipping lanes.
The interim Yemeni government is fighting southern secessionists and northern rebels in addition to al-Qaida-linked militants, who are seeking to overthrow the government and impose their version of Islamic law.
A Defense Ministry statement said three of the militants were killed at the compound's gate, three inside the premises after they had killed the foreign medics in a hospital there, while five others were pursued and killed later on Thursday.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), an offshoot of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen and among the most active and strongest arms of the global jihadi network.
"As part of the policy of targeting the operation rooms of pilotless planes, the mujahideen [holy fighters] have heavily struck one of these rooms in Defense Ministry headquarters," Ansar al-Sharia said in a Twitter post early on Friday.
"Such joint military locations, which participate with the Americans in their war against this Muslim nation, are a legitimate target for our operations," another tweet said.
The U.S. military raised its alert status in the region after the coordinated strikes on the ministry.
Murad Batal al-Shishani, a London-based analyst of Islamist groups, told Reuters the attack was likely to strengthen American-Yemeni cooperation against security threats.
"I don't know about the [U.S.] drone program [targeting militants], if this will escalate it or not. But generally, this will not affect the relationship. It will give them more reason to cooperate," he said.
Shishani said Thursday's attack, which combined a suicide bombing with a shooting spree, looked like an attempt "to copycat the Mumbai-style attack", referring to a 2008 assault on two hotels in the Indian city that killed nearly 200 people.
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