Al Qaida strike?

last updated 8 January 2015

Mina al-Dabh, Yemen

An explosion tore through the side of a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen this week, not far from where al Qaida attacked the USS Cole two years ago. One crewman died. French and Yemeni officials said that while they could not rule out terrorism, an oil leak was the more likely cause of the explosion. But Euronav SA, the French owner of the Limburg tanker, said it was unquestionably a terrorist attack. “It was not an accident,” Euronav director Jacques Moizan told the London Times. “The crew saw a high-speed vessel approaching on the starboard side.” The Cole explosion in 2000, which killed 17 crew members, was a suicide bombing in which al Qaida members sped an explosives-laden boat directly into the hull. Yemen is the bin Laden family’s ancestral home, and al Qaida is known to be active there.