The Empty Quarter

He asked to pose with the Koreans before blasting his body parts over a kilometer away.

The part about chewing qat is reminiscent of the Black Hawk Down reports of qat-crazed insurgents. Silly, really – he was not a terrorist on crack. More like a terrorist on Red Bull.

The part about being “tricked” may be misleading. I am under the impression that he was tricked into believing a “deviant” ideology, not into wearing a bomb belt – which, by the way, seems like a really difficult thing to ascertain. Sounds propagandish.

A witness at the scene says that the boy was with an older man in his 40s.

News Yemen has also published the names of the victims. (transliterating from Arabic) The names of those killed were females Hi Yun Chen and In Hi Kim, and males Yong Shu Ju and Bun Jan Park.

UPDATE: Reuters is reporting a  different name, and saying he was trained in Somali. The Taizi left his home two months ago. Posted here.

UPDATE: Better transliterations of the names are Park Bong-gan, Kim In-hye, Joo Yong-cheol and Shin Hye-yoon…I wasn’t even close.

Yemen bomber posed for pics with S Koreans: report

SANAA (AFP) — The Yemeni suicide bomber who killed four South Korean tourists in an attack two days ago had posed for a photo with the group just before blowing himself up, a local news website said on Tuesday.

NewsYemen, citing security officials, said the Yemeni teenagerhad asked for a picture with the tourists on a hill overlooking the historic city of Shibam shortly before detonating his explosives belt on Sunday.

The bombing, which has been blamed on Al-Qaeda, killed four South Koreans and the group’s Yemeni guide, and wounded five Koreans and a Yemeni, security officials said.

NewsYemen reported that the bomber had been trying to keep children away from the area before setting off the explosives, in the latest attack against foreign targets in the impoverished Arabian peninsula state.

It said investigators found theattacker’s identity card at the site, naming him as Ali Mohsen al-Ahmad. The security officials said he was born in 1990 in the Al-Salam (Peace) district of Sanaa and that he was recruited by Al-Qaeda’s arm in Yemen.

The bomber had chewed narcotic qat leaves that are similar in effect to amphetamines, raising blood pressure and body temperature and releasing adrenalin.

NewsYemen said parts of his body along with shrapnel from the bomb blast had been found a kilometre (about half a mile) away from the attack scene.

Yemen’s official news agency SABA said on Monday that the bomber was “tricked by Al-Qaeda into wearing an explosives vest.”

Shibam, in eastern Yemen, is famous for its multi-storey mud-brick merchants’ houses, which date back to the 16th century and have earned the town a UNESCO world heritage listing and the nickname of the “Manhattan of the desert.”

4 Korean Tourists Killed in Suicide Bombing

By Lee Tae-hoon
Staff Reporter
Four South Korean tourists were killed and three others wounded in a terrorist attack in the city of Shibam, eastern Yemen, Sunday.

Al-Qaida was behind the suicide bombing that killed the four, according to Yemen’s official Saba news agency Monday.

The agency said an 18-year-old who had been “tricked by al-Qaida into wearing an explosives vest” carried out the attack.

The area is the ancestral homeland of the militant network’s fugitive leader Osama bin Laden.

The government designated all of Yemen as a “travel restriction area,” asking people not to travel to the Mideast country.

Vice Foreign Minister Shin Kak-soo presided over an emergency meeting of related agencies, and a group of four officials was dispatched to Yemen.

The ministry expressed regret over the incident.

Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said the government expresses “our deep condolences to the victims and bereaved families.”

Seoul will cooperate with the Yemeni government to shed light on the cause of the tragedy, he said.

The incident occurred at 5:50 p.m. Sunday (local time) when 18 Koreans were traveling in the Arab nation, the ministry said.

The dead and wounded were taken to the Sayun Hospital in central Yemen, while the remaining 10 Korean tourists were rushed to a hotel to prepare to fly home.

Their Yemeni guide was also killed, but the three wounded Koreans are not in critical condition, according to Yonhap News Agency.

“An explosion took place as they were gathered on a hill called Khazzan that overlooks the city. The Telegraph.co.uk quoted a local security official as saying that they were on foot and taking pictures of the buildings in Shibam at sunset,” said a report.

Shibam is a UNESCO World Heritage site, often referred to as “the Manhattan of the desert,” the Yemeni official said.

Ma Gyeong-chan, a survivor of the incident and organizer of the tour, told Yonhap that the explosion occurred among belongings that local residents left at the site.

“While we were looking at the sunset, a teenager and a man in his early 40s who claimed to be his father approached and started talking to us,” Ma said.

“I’m not sure whether it was a terrorist bomb, but the explosion took place from the belongings they left, shortly after we parted (from) them,” he said.

The ministry also stated that though it appeared to be a terrorist bomb attack, it could not rule out the possibility that it could have been an accident caused by remnants of dynamite abandoned at a nearby closed mine.

“We are still trying to find the exact cause of the incident and related developments,” Kim Yu-chul, a senior official of the ministry, said.

No group has yet openly claimed responsibility for the explosion.

However, Khaled al-Hammadi, a journalist in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, hinted at the blast possible link to al-Qaida while talking on the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera, saying that it came after the announcement of a new leadership of the terror network on the Arabian peninsula.

Al-Qaida has maintained a strong presence in Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden. His group have attacked and killed foreigners in the poverty-stricken country on numerous occasions, including two Belgian tourists shot dead along with their local guide and driver in Hadramawt in January last year.

السياح الكوريين يغادرو صنعاء.. من عائلتين وأغلبهم وكل الجرحى نساء

17/03/2009

خاص، نيوزيمن:

قال مصدر بمطار صنعاء أن مجموعة السياح الكوريين الذين تعرضوا لحادث ارهابي في مدنية شبام أمس الأول غادروا أمس إلى سيؤول على متن رحلة تابعة لطيران الإمارات عبر دبي، غير أن السفارة الكورية بصنعاء ترفض الإدلاء بأية معلومات، حول ذلك.
من جانبه شددت قيادة وزارة الداخلية على ضرورة تكثيف الحراسات الأمنية المرافقة لتحركات الأجانب والسياح وإيلاء أهمية مضاعفة لتأمين الأماكن السياحية بطريقة مدروسة ومحكمة تشعر الأجنبي والسائح بالاطمئنان.
ووفقا لقائمة الأسماء التي حصل نيوزيمن عليها فإن المجموعة السياحية كانت عبارة عن أصدقاء أغلبهم من عائلتين، وأن الجرحى جميعهم نساء وهن كن أغلب أفراد الفوج السياحي.
نيوزيمن ينشر أسماء المتوفين، ترجمة عن اللغة الكورية (مع ملاحظة الاختلافات بين اللغتين الكورية والعربية عند ترجمة الأسنماء)
المتوفين:
نساء:
هيوون شين
أنهاي كيم
رجال:
يونج شو جو
بونجان بارك
الجرحى، وجميعهن نساء:
سانهي هونج
جونجسون بارك
جونخي سان
من لم يصابوا بأذى:
سيدات:
ليموك كيم
جيونخو لي
سينجهاي باراك
هومي باراك
هيونساك كيم
جونجسون بارك
سيكيانج كيم
جيونجشين لي
أوكينج كاون
الرجال:
جونجتي لي
هونجيل لي
خيونشان ما