Police defuse booby-trapped car in Yemen

Yemeni police on Saturday defused a booby-trapped car that was parked near a public market in the southeastern province of Hadramout, a government official told Xinhua. Experts of anti-bomb police squad found a car crammed with explosives in Mukalla city, the provincial capital of Hadramout, where they defused it without causing any casualties or damage, the local government official said on condition of anonymity. "Unidentified terrorists left a booby-trapped car in a densely populated area. They were trying to detonate it and assassinate top security commanders there," the government source said. "The explosives-packed car was powerful enough to have caused significant injury or loss of life -- possibly killing scores," he added. Security officials accused members of the al-Qaida terrorist group of being behind the botched bombing. In January 2009, al-Qaida affiliates in Saudi Arabia and Yemen officially merged and formed Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula ( AQAP). The group, mainly entrenching itself in Yemen's southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa, is on the terrorist list of the United States, which considers it as an increasing threat to national security. The AQAP underscores the challenges faced by Yemen's new President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi who won support from major Yemeni political forces, the United States and Saudi Arabia. Hadi is tasked with restoring security and stability to Yemen and putting an end to growing influence of al-Qaida that threatens daily oil shipping routes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.