US helps Yemen with hardware

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States gave military hardware, intelligence and other support to Yemeni forces who raided suspected Al-Qaeda hide-outs this week, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
The newspaper cited officials familiar with the operations as saying the US help, approved by President Barack Obama, had been given at the request of the Yemeni government.
The support was intended to help Yemen prevent Al-Qaeda from mounting attacks on American and other foreign targets inside its borders, the Times reported.
Yemen should be commended for actions against Al-Qaeda, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, told the newspaper.
Yemeni officials said their security forces and warplanes had killed around 30 militants in the countrys largest attack on the group in some years. One Yemeni source said the operations had foiled a planned series of suicide bombings.
The Times story did not provide details of the US support, but cited ABC News as saying it included missiles.
The reluctance of administration officials to comment on whether US forces had launched missiles into Yemen appeared to reflect a desire to make clear the Yemeni government was in the lead in operations within its borders, the newspaper said.
US officials told the Times that some of the strikes against suspected terrorist camps in Yemen were carried out solely by local forces.
American officials said last summer that they were seeing the first evidence that dozens of Al-Qaeda fighters, and a small handful of the groups leaders, were moving to Somalia and Yemen from Pakistan.
Meanwhile, four suspected Al-Qaeda militants targeted in a government military operation this week have been found in a Yemeni hospital, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday.
Government website September 26 also said that Saudi nationals had been among Al-Qaeda suspects killed in Thursdays operation.
Yemen said on Thursday that its security forces and warplanes had foiled a planned series of suicide bombings by attacking targets including an Al-Qaeda training centre in the southern province of Abyan and sites in Arhab district.
The four Yemenis were found in a hospital in Aden and placed under arrest, the ministry said. Their families had taken them there after the attack in Abyan.
Yemens opposition accused the government on Friday of killing dozens of civilians, including whole families, in the raids on Thursday.
US President Barack Obama called Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, saying the operation confirms Yemens resolve in confronting the danger of terrorism represented by Al-Qaeda for Yemen and the world, Yemens state media said.
As well as fighting Al-Qaeda militants, Yemen, the Arab worlds poorest country, is battling separatist unrest in the south and a Shia rebellion in the north.