12 Suspects Probed Over Yemen Bombing
By Lee Tae-hoon, Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporters
Yemeni authorities have temporarily concluded that Sunday’s explosion that killed four South Korean tourists at the ancient city of Shibam was a "planned suicide bomb attack’’ by Islamist terrorists, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Tuesday.
Yemeni police have arrested 12 Islamist suspects allegedly linked with Sunday’s attack, according to reports.
A ministry spokesman said the conclusion was made after an initial investigation by local authorities into the blast. A group of South Korean investigators are participating in the probe, he said.
"The preliminary investigation by the Yemeni Interior Ministry found that it was a deliberate terrorist attack,’’ the official said on condition of anonymity.
However, he said it remains unclear whether the terrorist group purportedly targeted South Korean nationals or not.
South Korea's ambassador to Yemen was meeting with the country's vice foreign minister to get detailed information, he added.
Twelve survivors of the blast returned to Seoul via Dubai, while two remaining survivors, workers of the travel agent that organized the group tour, will return home later, according to industry sources.
A group of 18 Korean tourists, including the four dead, were sightseeing in Shibam Sunday, the seventh day of their tour.
The suspects were members of jihadist groups believed to have information on the perpetrators of the bombing, the Associated Press said, quoting a Yemeni security official. The official said on condition of anonymity that he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The tragic incident will likely pressure the government to take stronger measures to keep its nationals away from danger zones overseas.
On mounting criticism on the government for allowing its nationals to travel to Yemen, a Middle East expert told The Korea Times Tuesday that it would have been difficult for Seoul to impose a travel ban on the Arab county.
"Yemen is known as an ideal tourist destination to many Westerners. Its government has been aiming to attract more tourists,” said In Nam-sik, Middle-East politics professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security.
"More than 190,000 tourists visited Yemen in 2007, which is aiming to attract 300,000 tourists by 2010. It must have been very difficult for the Korean government to impose such a ban without harming bilateral relations.”
He also dismissed the possibility that the attack might have been orchestrated directly by a central al-Qaida command.
"If the terrorist group’s central body planned the attack, they would have already claimed responsibility for the bombing to deliver its message or demand,” In said. "Though al-Qaida labeled Korea as a pro-American nation in 2005, locals are not hostile to Asians, especially Koreans. The Korean tourists were probably in an ideal location for the attack.”
The government designated all of Yemen as a "travel restriction area,'' urging people not to travel to the impoverished Middle Eastern country, which is also the ancestral homeland of the militant network's fugitive leader, Osama bin Laden.
Authorities say that they are considering prohibiting Koreans from traveling to Yemen if the ongoing investigation reveals that a terrorist group is responsible for the deaths of the Korean tourists.
A Korean soldier dispatched to Afghanistan for a peacekeeping and reconstruction mission was killed in 2007 in a suicide bombing.
Two of 23 Korean church volunteers abducted by the Taliban in Afghanistan were executed in captivity in the same year. And in 2004, a Korean civilian was kidnapped and brutally murdered by a local terrorist group in Iraq.
Seoul has imposed a travel ban on Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.
leeth@koreatimes.co.kr