Yemeni government forces stepped up a campaign against al-Qaeda suspects, as a clamour grew in the West after a failed attempt by a Nigerian jihadist to blow up an airliner approaching Detroit on Christmas Day. The man had recently been in Yemen. Security forces there said they had killed several al-Qaeda people and arrested at least three others. The American, British and French embassies in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, were temporarily closed after reports of planned attacks against them by al-Qaeda.
With airport security tightened, Barack Obama responded to mounting political pressure about the failed attack by castigating America’s intelligence services for not stopping the plot. The American president said there had been enough evidence from various parts of the intelligence system to prevent the bomber from boarding the plane in Amsterdam, but that intelligence officers had “failed to connect those dots”.
