Yemen deploys troops to attack Qaeda terrorists

SAN'A: Yemen deployed several hundred extra troops to two mountainous eastern provinces that are al-Qaida's main strongholds in the country and where the suspected would-be Christmas airplane bomber may have visited, security officials said Saturday. The reinforcements, aiming to beef up the military's presence in a remote region where the government has little control, were Yemen's latest move in a stepped-up campaign to combat al-Qaida. The United States plans to more than double its counterterrorism aid to the impoverished, fragmented Arab nation in the coming year to boost the fight. Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. general who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and who announced the increased aid, arrived in Yemen on Saturday and met with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Yemeni government official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. The confrontation with al-Qaida's branch in Yemen gained new urgency after the failed attempt on Christmas Day to bomb a U.S. airliner headed to Detroit. President Barack Obama said Saturday that al-Qaida's branch in Yemen was behind the attempt. A 23-year-old Nigerian accused in the attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen. Yemeni security officials said Abdulmutallab may have travelled to Marif or Jouf provinces - remote, mountainous regions east of the capital where al-Qaida's presence is the strongest - though the officials cautioned that it was still not certain where he met up with members of the terror group. Yemeni Information Minister Hassan al-Louzi said Abdulmutallab's movements are "under investigation. They are trying to uncover where he went, who he met with." The security officials also said Abdulmutallab may have been in contact by email with a radical Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaqi, during his stay in Yemen. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.