As US drone strikes rise in Yemen, so does anger

FILE - In this Friday, April 12, 2013 file photo, members of the Yemeni al-Houthi Shiite rebel group burn an effigy of a U.S. aircraft during a demonstration to protest against the U.S. and Saudi interference in Yemen, after Friday prayer in Sanaa, Yemen. A public backlash is starting to grow in Yemen over civilians killed by American drones as the U.S. dramatically steps up its strikes against al-Qaida’s branch here the past year. Relatives of those killed say the missile blasts hitting their towns only turn Yemenis against the U.S. campaign to crush militants. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

FILE - This Oct. 2008 file photo shows Imam Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike. A public backlash is starting to grow in Yemen over civilians killed by American drones as the U.S. dramatically steps up its strikes against al-Qaida’s branch here the past year. Relatives of those killed say the missile blasts hitting their towns only turn Yemenis against the U.S. campaign to crush militants. The drone strikes have taken out high-level targets in Yemen such as American-born cleric al-Awlaki, believed to have been a powerful tool for al-Qaida’s recruiting in the West. Most, however, appear to target midlevel operatives. (AP Photo/Muhammad ud-Deen, File)

FILE - In this Monday, Jan. 28, 2013 file photo, a Yemeni protestor shouts slogans denouncing air strikes by U.S. drones during a demonstration in front of the residence of Yemen's president Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi in Sanaa, Yemen. A public backlash is starting to grow in Yemen over civilians killed by American drones as the U.S. dramatically steps up its strikes against al-Qaida’s branch here the past year. Relatives of those killed say the missile blasts hitting their towns only turn Yemenis against the U.S. campaign to crush militants. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed, File)

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — The cleric preached in his tiny Yemenivillage about the evils of al-Qaida, warning residents to stay away from the group's fighters and their hard-line ideology. The talk worried residents, who feared it would bring retaliation from themilitants, and even the cleric's father wanted him to stop.

But in the end it wasn't al-Qaida that killed Sheik Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber.

Al-Qaida fighters, who hide in mountain strongholds near the remote eastern village of Khashamir, did call him out, demanding he meet them one night — apparently to intimidate him into stopping his sermons against them.

Sheik Salem felt he had no choice but to meet them, but a cousin who was in the police insisted on accompanying him as protection, according to the cleric's brother-in-law, Faysal bin Ali bin Jaber, who recounted the events to The Associated Press.

"Once they arrived to the car where al-Qaida was, four missiles hit," Faysal said. At home in the village, he heard the blasts — and heard the U.S. drone that struck the cars. "We know the buzzing sound of the drones overhead," he said.

Yemeni security officials confirmed three militants, along with Sheik Salem and his cousin were killed in the strike last August and that it was carried out by an American drone.

In its covert fight against al-Qaida in Yemen, the United States has dramatically stepped up its use ofdrone strikes the past year, scoring key successes against one of the most active branches of the terror network. With more than 40 strikes reported in 2012 and nine so far this year, Yemen has become the second biggest front in American drone warfare, after Pakistan.

But the escalation has meant more civilians getting caught in the crossfire.

Civilian deaths are breeding resentments on a local level, sometimes undermining U.S. efforts to turn the public against militants. The backlash is still not as large as in Pakistan, where there is heavy pressure on the government to force limits on strikes — but public calls for a halt to strikes are starting to emerge.

Several dozen activists protested on Monday near the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, denouncing the strikes. "The drone program is terrorizing our people," the activists wrote in an open letter to President Barack Obama. "One never knows where the next drone will strike nor how many innocent victims will die."

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington last week on the drone program, Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemeni whose village had been struck only days earlier, told the senators that drones are "harming efforts to win hearts and minds," saying drones are now "the face of America" to many Yemenis.

"What violent militants had previously failed to achieve, one drone strike achieved in an instant," he said.

Faysal bin Jaber said the strike had deepened the fear in Khashamir.

Sheik Salem had spoken in his sermon "about how killing people and labeling people who work with the West as infidels is wrong," Faysal said.

But after the strike, "everyone who saw that there is no differentiating between us and al-Qaida are asking why don't we just join al-Qaida since it makes no difference?" he said. The cleric's widow — Faysal's sister —now relies on relatives and neighbors for support for herself and her seven children.

While the United States acknowledges its drone program in Yemen, it does not confirm individual strikes or release information on how many have been carried out. Three prominent groups have been compiling data on strikes, mainly from news reports, including the AP's, based on reports by Yemeni security officials: the London-based Bureau for Investigative Journalism and the U.S.-based Long War Journal and the New America Foundation.

Their estimates on the number of U.S. airstrikes vary — from 44 to 67 since 2002, the majority of them by drones. Compiling accurate data has been even more difficult because until recently, the Yemeni military took responsibility for many strikes apparently carried out by the United States.

All three groups mark a dramatic escalation last year. The Long War Journal, for example, recorded 42 strikes in 2012, up from 10 the year before. The Associated Press has reported on nine strikes so far in 2013.

By comparison, the U.S. has carried out more than 330 airstrikes in Pakistan since 2004, though there the rate has been falling — from a peak of 117 strikes in 2010 to 46 in 2012, according to the Long War Journal's count.

Determining civilian deaths is even more difficult. The Long War Journal says it has confirmed 35 civilians and 193 militants killed by American strikes in 2012, up from six civilians and 10 militants the year before. This year, 31 militants and no civilians have been killed, according to its count. AP has reported 33 militants killed this year, with no confirmed civilian deaths.

C.I.A. director John Brennan says the strikes are only used as a last resort against suspects believed to be plotting against America.

"In short, targeted strikes against the most senior and most dangerous AQAP terrorists are not the problem, they are part of the solution," he said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations in August, using the initials of the group's full name, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

The United States says al-Qaida's branch in Yemen is among the group's most dangerous and active offshoots. It has been linked to several attempted attacks on U.S. targets, including a botched Christmas Day 2009 bombing of an airliner over Detroit and explosives-laden parcels intercepted aboard cargo flights a year later.

The spike in strikes in 2012 came as the U.S. was backing a Yemeni military campaign to uproot al-Qaida militants and their radical allies who had taken over a string of southern cities and towns. The campaign, including heavy ground fighting by Yemeni troops, largely drove the militants into the mountains and countryside.

The drone strikes have taken out high-level targets in Yemen such as American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, believed to have been a powerful tool for al-Qaida's recruiting in the West. Most, however, appear to target midlevel operatives. Still on the loose is AQAP's leader, Nasser al-Wahishi.

Soon after al-Awlaki's death, his 16 year-old American son, Abdulrahman, and a teenage cousin were killed in a suspected U.S. drone strike. Afterward, Yemeni protesters rallied outside the U.S. Embassy, carrying the teenagers' pictures and posters that said "U.S. tax payers kill U.S. citizens" and "Where is justice?"

On Sunday, relatives of civilians killed in strikes gathered in Sanaa to raise awareness on the deaths, in the first meeting of its kind, organized by the London-based legal action group Reprieve.

Mohammed Ahmed Bijash told the gathering that his 10-year-old daughter was killed in the southern city of Jaar when a missile hit her school during fighting last year to drive out al-Qaida militants.

"What is the crime we committed for U.S. bombs to hit our homes?" he said at the meeting. "They have turned our lives into hell."

Hussein Saeed Dahman's 16 year-old son was knocked unconscious from a drone strike in December while playing soccer with friends in in the city of Shar Hadramawt.

"The sky rained down U.S. missiles and then the kids found body parts in the soccer field," the father told AP. His son, Hamza, remains bedridden and unable to speak.

U.S. lawyer Cori Crider, who works with Reprieve, said tribal leaders she has spoken to warn the strikes only strengthen support for al-Qaida.

"There is a definitely a branch of al-Qaida here. They are real," she told AP. "The question is, What is the appropriate response to this?"

"You can't bomb you way out of an insurgency."

Ore. shooter bought 6 boxes of ammo before attack

Oregon mall shooter bought 30-round magazines, 6 boxes of ammo in days before December attack

Associated Press -

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- The man who killed two people and wounded another at a suburban Oregon mall bought more than 100 rounds of ammunition and magazines to carry them in the days before the December attack, according to a sheriff's report released Wednesday.

Jacob Roberts, 22, fired into crowds of people at the Clackamas Town Center outside of Portland before killing himself on Dec. 11.

The nearly 1,000-page report details the ammunition purchases and also gives new witness accounts that reflect the chaos of the scene amid the backdrop of a mall at peak Christmas shopping season.

Deputies from the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office found people outside the building "in a trance,"Deputy Mark Nikolai wrote in an incident report. He and several other deputies separated into "hunting cells" and made their way through the mall.

Nikolai walked past an empty AR-15 magazine and came upon Nicolas A. Meli, a bystander armed with a handgun.

Meli told police after the shooting that he had a clear shot at Roberts, but was afraid he would miss and shoot someone else.

"I didn't want to draw attention to myself because if I was to miss ... I didn't want stray (bullets) to go into where (bystanders) were," Meli told police in an interview later.

Kelly Lay of St. Helens, Ore., was in front of a food-court Mexican restaurant when he heard gunfire and watched rounds hitting the tile above the menu board over his head. He glanced over and saw the man police believe was Roberts. He was dressed in black with a white hockey mask. Lay later told an officer that it didn't seem like the shooter was aiming at anyone in particular.

Cindy Yuille and Steven Forsythe were killed in the attack, and 15-year-old Kristina Shevchenko was injured.

Roberts got the gun from a friend, Sean Cates, according to previously released court documents. Cates reported the gun stolen after the attack.

The new report gave more details about Roberts' actions before the attack.

The morning of the shooting, Roberts' roommate, Jaime Eheler, said she noticed something off about him.

"Just something wasn't right. The look in his eyes," Eheler told investigators.

Eheler compared it to a person on stimulants whose eyes "get a little bugged out."

Just before the shooting, Roberts visited Eheler's brother, Tyler, and gave him the cancer-awareness bracelet he wore and told him he was leaving because things were "heading south."

Roberts' roommates discovered empty boxes of ammunition in his room. They looked online and found that the ammunition matching the boxes could be used for an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. At about 7 p.m. on the night of the shooting, one of the roommates called the sheriff's office tip line and said they believed Roberts was the shooter.

Police reached no conclusions about Roberts' motive. A toxicology report showed Roberts had marijuana and residual levels of cocaine in his system when he died.

Officers asked Eheler, his roommate, and she, too, was at a loss for answers for why it happened.

"I mean, can you think of anything," a detective asked her, "that would make him snap or do this?"

"The only thing I can come up with," she said, "is he has nobody besides me and my family."

___

NKorea sentences US man in possible bid for talks

FILE - This 1988 file photo provided by Bobby Lee shows Kenneth Bae, right, and Lee together when they were freshmen students at the University of Oregon. Bae, detained for nearly six months in North Korea, has been sentenced to 15 years of "compulsory labor" for unspecified crimes against the state, Pyongyang announced Thursday, May 2, 2013. (AP Photo/The Register-Guard, Bobby Lee, File)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A Korean American detained for six months in North Korea has been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for "hostile acts" against the state, the North's media said Thursday — a move that could trigger a visit by a high-profile American if history is any guide.

Kenneth Bae, 44, a Washington state man described by friends as a devout Christian and a tour operator, is at least the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others eventually were deported or released without serving out their terms, some after trips to Pyongyang by prominent Americans, including former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

With already abysmal U.S.-North Korean ties worsening since a long-range rocket-launch more than a year ago, Pyongyang is fishing for another such meeting, said Ahn Chan-il, head of the World Institute for North Korea Studies think tank in South Korea.

"North Korea is using Bae as bait to make such a visit happen. An American bigwig visiting Pyongyang would also burnish Kim Jong Un's leadership profile," Ahn said. Kim took power after his father,Kim Jong Il, died in December 2011.

The authoritarian country has faced increasing criticism over its nuclear weapons ambitions. Six-nation disarmament talks involving the Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia fell apart in 2009. Several rounds of U.N. sanctions have not encouraged the North to give up its small cache of nuclear devices, which Pyongyang says it must not only keep but expand to protect itself from a hostile Washington.

Pyongyang's tone has softened somewhat recently, following weeks of violent rhetoric, including threats of nuclear war and missile strikes. There have been tentative signs of interest in diplomacy, and a major source of North Korean outrage — annual U.S.-South Korean military drills — ended Tuesday.

In Washington, the U.S. State Department said it was working with the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang to confirm the report of Bae's sentencing. The United States lacks formal diplomatic ties with North Korea and relies on Sweden for diplomatic matters involving U.S. citizens there. The Swedish ambassador in Pyongyang, Karl-Olof Andersson, referred queries to the State Department.

Patrick Cronin, a senior analyst with the Washington-based Center for a New American Security, called Bae's conviction "a hasty gambit to force a direct dialogue with the United States."

"While Washington will do everything possible to spare an innocent American from years of hard labor, U.S. officials are aware that in all likelihood the North Korean regime wants a meeting to demonstrate that the United States in effect confers legitimacy on the North's nuclear-weapon-state status," Cronin said in an email.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One en route to Mexico that if North Korea is interested in talks, they should live up to their obligations under the six-party talks.

"Thus far, as you know, they have flouted their obligations, engaged in provocative actions and rhetoric that brings them no closer to a situation where they can improve the lot of the North Korean people or re-enter the community of nations," Carney said.

Bae's trial on charges of "committing hostile acts" against North Korea took place in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said. The announcement came just days after KCNA said Saturday that authorities would soon indict and try him. KCNA has referred to Bae as Pae Jun Ho, the North Korean spelling for his Korean name.

Bae, from Lynnwood, Washington, was arrested in early November in Rason, a special economic zone in North Korea's far northeastern region bordering China and Russia, state media said. The exact nature of Bae's alleged crimes has not been revealed.

"Kenneth Bae had no access to a lawyer. It is not even known what he was charged with," the human rights group Amnesty International said in a statement. "Kenneth Bae should be released, unless he is charged with an internationally recognizable criminal offense and retried by a competent, independent and impartial court."

Friends and colleagues say Bae was based in the Chinese border city of Dalian and traveled frequently to North Korea to feed orphans. Bae's mother in the United States did not answer calls seeking comment Thursday.

There are parallels to a case in 2009. After Pyongyang's launch of a long-range rocket and its second underground nuclear test that year, two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor after sneaking across the border from China.

They later were pardoned on humanitarian grounds and released to Clinton, who met with then-leader Kim Jong Il. U.S.-North Korea talks came later that year.

In 2011, Carter visited North Korea to win the release of imprisoned American Aijalon Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for crossing illegally into the North from China.

Korean American Eddie Jun was released in 2011 after Robert King, the U.S. envoy on North Korean human rights, traveled to Pyongyang. Jun had been detained for half a year over an unspecified crime.

Jun and Gomes are also devout Christians. While North Korea's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in practice only sanctioned services are tolerated by the government.

U.N. and U.S. officials accuse North Korea of treating opponents brutally. Foreign nationals have told varying stories about their detentions in North Korea.

The two journalists sentenced to hard labor in 2009 stayed in a guest house instead of a labor camp due to medical concerns.

Ali Lameda, a member of Venezuela's Communist Party and a poet invited to the North in 1966 to work as a Spanish translator, said that he was detained in a damp, filthy cell without trial the following year after facing espionage allegations that he denied. He later spent six years in prison after a one-day trial, he said.

___

Associated Press writers Lou Kesten and Nedra Pickler in Washington contributed to this report.

Disabled Gaza baby lives in Israel hospital

Muslims in Myanmar barricade village as attacks spread

By Jared Ferrie

WIN KITE, Myanmar (Reuters) - Three Muslim men peered over a bamboo fence built recently to fortify their village in central Myanmar. They gazed across dry rice paddies towards a nearbyBuddhist community, looking for rising dust, a sign of an approaching mob.

It was a false alarm. But a day earlier, on Wednesday, about 100 Buddhists armed with sticks had gathered outside the fence, threatening to burn the village and kill them, said the villagers of Win Kite, about a two-hour drive from Myanmar's largest city, Yangon.

Police foiled that attack. But Muslims were taking no chances after four days of mob violence led byBuddhist monks in Meikhtila in March killed 44 people, mostly Muslims, and touched off a wave of unrest in central Myanmar that threatens to derail the country's nascent economic and political reforms.

"We have a plan to defend ourselves if they come and attack us," said Kin So, adding that many in Win Kite had armed themselves with clubs and swords as a precaution for when troops and police patrolling the area pull out.

The five-foot (1.5 meter) fence encircling Win Kite is a vivid illustration of divisions between Myanmar's Muslims and majority Buddhists that are beginning to cause problems elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Indonesian police said on Friday they had foiled a plan to attack Myanmar's embassy in Jakarta, arresting two men late on Thursday and seizing explosives.

A spokesman told reporters the suspects had planned the attack in protest at the treatment ofRohingya Muslims in Myanmar. At least 192 people, mostly Rohingya, were killed last year in clashes with Buddhists in Rakhine State.

In April, eight people died when Muslim and Buddhist refugees clashed at an Indonesian immigration center.

On April 30, one man was killed in riots in Oakkan and nearby villages just 100 km (60 miles) north ofYangon, when a Muslim woman bumped into an 11-year-old novice monk, who dropped his alms bowl, damaging it.

The authorities are aware that such mundane incidents can spiral out of control in the present environment. A district officer said a measure that stops crowds from gathering had been imposed in Taikkyi, a town near Oakkan, as a precaution.

Presidential spokesman Ye Htut said in a Facebook statement the authorities had averted trouble in the city of Mandalay when three motorcyclists rode through a Muslim neighborhood shouting that Buddhist monks had come to burn down their houses.

"Security personnel went to the site immediately and explained that it was not true," Ye Htut said. "They assured the people of security. An investigation is going on to expose and detain these instigators."

ARRESTS

Yangon's deputy police commissioner, Thet Lwin, told Reuters 18 people had been arrested in connection with the Oakkan riots, including the woman who inadvertently started them, charged with "deliberate and malicious acts" that insult religion.

"According to our practice, we need to send her for trial since she was involved in the root cause of the incident," he said, adding that although she had bumped into the monk by accident, it was up to the court to decide her fate.

In the village of Win Kite, a 45-minute drive down dusty roads from Oakkan, 40 members of the security forces guaranteed peace - for now.

On Wednesday, police managed to push the mob back to Sa Phyu, a Buddhist village about a half hour's walk away. There they calmed the crowd, which agreed not to attack the Muslims, according to Deputy Commissioner Thet Lwin.

One man from Sa Phyu, who would not give his name because he feared arrest, confirmed the police had prevented the attack.

A Reuters investigation found radical Buddhist monks had been actively involved in the violence in Meikhtila in March.

People interviewed in Sa Phyu denied any involvement with monks and said there had not been any meetings or phone calls on Wednesday, adding some 700 Buddhists had gathered spontaneously from various villages in the area

Myint Shwe and fellow Muslims in Win Kite fear the mob will return and they remain virtual prisoners beyond their bamboo fence.

"Now we have police and military so it's safe," he said. "But when the security forces go back, we don't know what's going to happen."

(Additional reporting by Aung Hla Tun and Minzayar Oo in Myanmar and Kanupriya Kapoor in Jakarta; Editing by Alan Raybould and Nick Macfie)