The escape of 13 convicted militants, including Jamal Badawi, mastermind of the bombing attack on US destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, triggers global alert

The escape of 13 al-Qaida inmates, including two convicted for deadly attacks on a US warship and a French supertanker, was a major blow to Yemen's fight against the Osama bin Laden network, diplomats said yesterday.

Yemeni security forces scoured mountainous provinces for the fugitives, who include prominent al-Qaida members Jamal Badawi, the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the US warship USS Cole, and Fawaz al-Rabe'ie. leader of a group that bombed the French oil tanker Limburg two years later.

US ally Yemen, bin Laden's ancestral homeland, has shed its image as a haven for militants by cracking down on al-Qaida. But analysts and opposition politicians said the jailbreak was a major embarrassment for the government as well as a blow to its security efforts.

"This unravels all the work that the Yemeni Government has done over the past couple of years (against al-Qaida)," said a senior Western diplomat. "It is a very serious error."

Several diplomats said Western embassies were reviewing their security procedures after the incident. "With so many al-Qaida operatives at large, there are concerns," said an envoy.

The Interior Ministry circulated pictures of the escapees after Interpol on Sunday issued a global security alert saying the men were a "clear and present danger to all countries."

Tunnel dug from nearby mosque

Security sources said the militants were among a group of 23 inmates who escaped through a 140-metre-long tunnel that appears to have been dug from a nearby mosque.

The entrance of the tunnel was in the less frequented women's section of the mosque and the inmates probably fled on Thursday night, the sources added.

Ali al-Sarari of the opposition Communist Party said the inmates had help from the outside. "Nobody, not even al-Qaida, could have done this alone," he added.

The security sources said the guards in the prison, in Sanaa's central Siyasi residential area, were being questioned.

Badawi masterminded the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 US sailors. His death sentence was commuted last February to 15 years in prison. Rabe'ie was sentenced to death for the Limburg bombing.

Fares bin Houzam, a expert on al-Qaida, said he expected the fugitives to flee Yemen rather than stay and stage more attacks. "This is not a hit-and-run group and they are in no shape to plan or gather weapons for any sort of attack," he said.

"They know the authorities are surrounding their hideouts, so the most likely scenario is that they will head to Afghanistan to join al-Qaida there. They have no links to the Saudi al-Qaida and getting into Iraq is difficult these days."

Al-Qaida militants have waged a campaign of suicide bombings and shootings in neighbouring Saudi Arabia over the past few years although the offensive has largely run out of steam.

Interpol issued a global security alert on Sunday over the escape of the militants, calling them a "clear and present danger to all countries." It circulated a warning to its 184 member states over the missing prisoners and urged them to take extra precautions at their borders.

But two days after the escape was discovered, Interpol had not yet issued individual wanted notices for the fugitives because it said Yemeni authorities had yet to provide it with all the required information.

(China Daily 02/07/2006 page11)