Aden police say they foiled a plot to bomb security forces and seized an explosive device
Yemen Herald News 
ADEN, Yemen — Police in Aden said they foiled a plot to bomb security and military forces and vital sites in the capital, and arrested one suspect.
The account comes from a statement issued on Saturday by the media office of the Aden Capital Security Administration. No independent confirmation of the operation has been published, and Yemen Herald could not verify it.
The statement said police in Dar Saad district carried out the operation with officers from the Kabouta police station.
Officers found an improvised explosive device and related materials in the suspect’s possession, it said.
Colonel Musleh al-Dharhani, director of the Dar Saad police station, said the arrest followed surveillance, monitoring and intelligence gathering, according to the statement.
He said investigators followed leads in the case until they identified the man. The statement did not say on what date the arrest took place.
Police named him as Walid Saleh Ahmed Saleh.
According to investigation records cited in the statement, he said he had received an explosive device to use against a military force on a main road in Aden.
He obtained the device after contact with a man he named as Mamoun al-Zajar, the statement said.
He travelled to the Sabr area of Lahj province, met a man there who handed him the device, then carried it to Aden and hid it, according to the same account.
The device was later moved to the Ninety Street area and then placed inside a building near Fifty Street, the statement said, citing his account.
He said he expected to be paid a sum of money and given a car once the attack was carried out.
The aim was to create disorder and shake security in the capital, according to his statements as recorded by investigators.
The statement said he described a meeting in al-Hawban, in Taiz province, with three men, including al-Zajar, at which arrangements for an operation in Aden were discussed.
About six months earlier he met one of them, named in the statement as Amjad Khalid, in the same area, according to the police account.
Khalid was carrying a list of names of commanders and officers in the Giants Brigades and of security officers, the suspect said, according to the statement.
He said he recognised two names on it: a mosque imam, Munir al-Saadi, and al-Dharhani, the Dar Saad police chief.
Investigators said Khalid was in contact with the suspect in the minutes before his arrest, urging him to strike any military or security force in the capital.
The statement said the tasks assigned to him went beyond the attack itself.
They included recruiting others and writing slogans and leaflets against the Arab coalition, according to the account.
He also said he was told to use names linked to the Southern Forces in order to stir divisions.
Al-Zajar told him other people in Aden had been assigned to carry out drone attacks on government and security headquarters, he said.
Police said further explosive devices were found at his residence.
He said those had been brought from Sanaa about a year earlier and handed to him by a man he described as linked to the Houthis.
They were meant for Arab coalition officers and Giants Brigades commanders, including Bassam al-Mahdhar, a commander in the Nation’s Shield Forces, according to his statement.
The Houthis have not responded publicly to the police account. None of the allegations has been tested in court, and no response has been published from the men named in it.
Aden Police said investigations were continuing to identify others involved and to trace links in the case.
The force said it would complete legal procedures against anyone found to be involved.
Dar Saad police reported a separate find in the district in July, when officers said they recovered C-4 explosive, several explosive belts and an artillery shell converted into a device in the al-Musabain area.
The latest statement did not say whether the two cases were connected.
Aden has recorded repeated bombings and assassinations of officials, officers and clerics since the government returned to the city in 2015.
Security in the capital is divided among several forces, a pattern reflected in the statement, which named units answering to different commands.
The announcement came as fighting intensified elsewhere in Yemen.
Government forces and the Houthis have fought over high ground in western Taiz and in Lahj province in recent weeks.
Al Jazeera reported on 14 September that government forces had advanced in Taiz while Houthi fighters took islands in the Red Sea.
The Houthis hold Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, Perim Island and the Hanish Islands, Al Jazeera reported on 11 September, giving them a position astride the Bab al-Mandab strait.
A government displacement unit said nearly 147,000 people were displaced in the first 18 days of September.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its March plan that more than 22 million people in Yemen need assistance.
OCHA put the number of acutely food insecure at 18.3 million and the number of internally displaced at 5.2 million.
The office sought 2.16 billion dollars this year to reach 12 million people.
Saudi Arabia has led a coalition supporting the internationally recognised government since March 2015.
The Houthis have held Sanaa and several northern provinces since September 2014.
The Dar Saad police station covers the northern approaches to Aden, on the road toward Lahj.
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