Oil worker killed, five wounded in Yemeni attack

July 2, 2007
One oil worker was killed and five wounded on June 23 when a Yemeni guard opened fire on a group of workers at an Occidental Petroleum Corp. site in Yemen’s Shabwa province, about 300 miles south of the capital of Sanaa.

One oil worker was killed and five wounded on June 23 when a Yemeni guard opened fire on a group of workers at an Occidental Petroleum Corp. site in Yemen’s Shabwa province, about 300 miles south of the capital of Sanaa.

The victims were disembarking an airplane that had landed at Oxy’s Al-Naeem airstrip in Shabwa when the guard randomly opened fire at them, according to a report in the Al-Ayyam newspaper.

Yemen’s Interior Ministry said a female Indian oil engineer died in the attack, while Oxy said only that one of its subcontractors, a non-American, was killed. A local governor claimed the Yemeni guard was mentally ill-a phrase often used by officials when terrorists are involved in violence.

The shooting came just days after an earlier attack in nearby Aden. On June 19, Yemeni security officials said they arrested two men, suspected of being linked to al-Qaeda, who confessed to the attempted bombing of an oil pipeline in the southern province.

The attacks come amid renewed warnings of violence against Westerners in the country, particularly on the oil sector.

On June 21, a terrorist web site posted an undated audio statement from the leader of the so-called “Al-Qaeda of Jihad Organization in the Land of Yemen.”

A speaker on the audio said the Yemeni group would not negotiate with the government and that the group will “continue jihad until the last Crusader is driven out of the Arabian Peninsula.”

Last November, the same web site posted the first statement from the group, in which it claimed responsibility for attacks on oil facilities in Hadramaut, Yemen.

Terrorists have long sought to disrupt Yemen’s oil developments.

In October 2002, the French Foreign Affairs ministry confirmed that the “initial results” of the investigation being conducted by French, Yemeni, and American investigators aboard the tanker Limburg indicate a terrorist attack (OGJ Online, Oct. 11, 2002). Al-Qaeda later claimed responsibility for the attack in which one seaman aboard the Limburg was killed.