SANA, YEMEN — A well-coordinated attack on the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital Wednesday morning left 16 people dead, but was ultimately thwarted by security barriers and Yemeni soldiers, six of whom perished in a car bomb explosion and ensuing gun battle.
No American personnel were reported hurt. The attackers failed to breach the well-guarded compound's gates and get close to the building housing U.S. officials.
An obscure group called Islamic Jihad, unrelated to the Palestinian organization of the same name, claimed responsibility. U.S. officials said the attack appeared similar to those orchestrated by Al Qaeda, though the assailants' identities remained undetermined.
The violence added to fears about instability in the impoverished and war-torn Arabian peninsula nation of 23 million, beside a critical route through which nearly 5% of the world's crude oil passes every day.
Wednesday's operation was the deadliest by Islamic militants on a U.S. target in Yemen since the 2000 attack by Al Qaeda on the destroyer Cole in the port of Aden. It was also one of the biggest and most elaborately organized attacks in the country this year, showing the continued resilience of Al Qaeda in the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden even as the U.S.-allied government regularly arrests and kills militants.
"This attack is a reminder that we are at war with extremists who will murder innocent people to achieve their ideological objectives," President Bush said in an appearance at the White House with Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former U.S. commander in Iraq who is assuming command of all American forces in the Middle East.
State Department officials said the attack began with a car bomb going off near a guard post outside the main entrance to the heavily protected embassy.
Frightened employees and visitors lay down on the floor as the embassy's walls shook, said one U.S. citizen who asked that her name and the name of her organization remain unpublished for security reasons.
"I was sitting with some people in a meeting and we heard this loud bomb and there was some smaller explosions," the woman said in a telephone interview.
"They said, 'Get under your desks,' " she said, referring to embassy staff. "It was a little unnerving. Everybody was frightened at a certain point. Nobody knew what was going on."
Within minutes of the blast, armed men appeared on foot, dressed in military uniforms that obscured their identity.
