Yemeni official: Saudis in Al-Qaeda left Syria and Iraq and moved to our country
as their expertise contributed on what appears as series of deadly attacks of al-Qaeda.
The Yemeni security official , who asked for anonymity told , "Reuters ," in news briefed by " Shafaq News " that " Saudi person comes here now is an experienced fighters due to the war in Iraq or Syria and is ready to martyr “.
He added that " they knew how to make weapons and bombs and teach others. "
Foreign fighters have come to Syria to join fighting of Islamist opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the last two years.
Iraq has also attracted previously jihadists from around the world who are eager to fight the U.S. forces and the Shiite-led authorities that had come to power after the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Yemen has also became a jihad arena for U.S. drone attacks targeting al-Qaeda since more than ten years.
An investigation of the Yemeni government showed that most of the perpetrators of the attack on a hospital affiliated to the Ministry of Defense in the capital Sanaa on the fifth of December were Saudis.
The attack killed at least 52 people and appeared to be caused embarrassment even to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which blamed a dissident fighter for killing medics and defenseless patients at the hospital .
The killings, captured on closed-circuit television and broadcast by state media, caused outrage in Yemen, where U.S. drone strikes had previously gained some sympathy for AQAP.
The security official said some Saudi militants who had come to Yemen from Syria were on trial after being captured and that some Saudis involved in the hospital assault had fought in Iraq.
Abdulrazzaq al-Jamal, a Yemeni journalist who has interviewed AQAP members, said the group was imitating the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which operates in Iraq and Syria, in how it selects its targets and tactics.
"AQAP used to execute its operations using roadside bombs. Now it has started ... storming into facilities," he said.
On February 13, seven people were killed in a bomb, grenade and gun assault on the main prison in Sanaa and 19 people jailed for terrorism-related crimes escaped in the chaos.
Black-clad militants appeared in an AQAP video posted online last month that documented four attacks, including the one on the Defence Ministry hospital. They were seen training in the desert, preparing for action and making speeches beforehand.
Nine of the 14 men shown had Saudi accents or names such as Abu Khaled al-Makki and Abu Naser al-Najdi, suggesting they hail from the Saudi city of Mecca or the kingdom's Najd region.
But Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki , spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry said that he believed it was unlikely that many Saudi militants to move from Iraq to Syria or Yemen , because the two countries were still the main areas of the fighting .
He said that " a few hundred " of Saudi militants had moved to Yemen in the past and that the ministry had no information about any Saudi probably traveled from Syria to Yemen recently without passing through Saudi Arabia .
