On September 17, 2008, an attack was carried out against the embassy of the United States in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. Seven gunmen travelling in two car bombs attempted to enter the compound through the main entrance by masquerading as an official Yemeni delegation. At 9:13 a.m. they arrived at a checkpoint to the entrance, but their plan was foiled after a guard closed the drop bar to the main gate and sounded the alarm. Instead of blowing up the gate as planned, the first vehicle was rammed into a nearby military technical, while the second one later attempted to breach the walls but failed. Three gunmen controlled the entrance area and fired into the compound and at Yemeni security forces who besieged them before they had all died by approximately 9:55 a.m.
The attack left 20 people dead and 10 wounded. It was the deadliest attack against a US government facility outside of an active battlefield since the September 11 attacks. The only American who died was Susan Elbaneh, a Yemeni-American woman killed alongside her husband as they waited in line outside the embassy. Responsibility was claimed by al-Qaeda in the South of the Arabian Peninsula (AQSAP), which said the attackers had all attended a mosque together and that several of them attempted to join the Iraqi insurgency before deciding on an attack in Yemen.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) worked with Yemeni authorities to investigate the attack. It was quickly linked to al-Qaeda, with AQSAP leader Nasir al-Wuhayshi being labelled its alleged mastermind and the perpetrators being linked to local training camps. The investigation had stalled by the next year due to a lack of bilateral cooperation. In 2015, an individual claiming to be a former AQSAP informant said the Yemeni government had foreknowledge of the attack and secretly provided support for it.
American officials including President George W. Bush condemned the attack and emphasized further counterterrorism cooperation with Yemen. It was also met with condemnation in Yemen and internationally. Analysts described the attack as sophisticated and unprecedented, and indicative of an al-Qaeda resurgence in the country. Retrospectively it has been considered "a landmark operation in the history of jihadism in Yemen". The country was thereon prioritized in the counterterrorism strategy of the Barack Obama administration. Another attack planned against the embassy in 2009 was met with military intervention.
Background
Al-Qaeda underwent a resurgence in Yemen after a prison escape in 2006 freed several key militants. The year of 2008 witnessed an increase in attacks and propaganda releases by al-Qaeda-affiliated militant groups. One of these groups was the Soldiers' Brigade of Yemen, which claimed responsibility for the majority of the attacks, while the other was al-Qaeda in the South of the Arabian Peninsula (AQSAP), which was mostly engaged in publishing the online magazine Sada al-Malahem.
The embassy of the United States in Sanaa had long been a target of militant threats and violence, resulting in the diplomatic mission instilling heavy security measures. The most recent attack was an attempted mortar shelling on March 16, 2008, which failed and instead struck a nearby female high school. This was followed by further shelling against an embassy residential compound in Haddah on April 6, resulting in the embassy ordering an evacuation of non-essential personnel and relatives. These incidents were attributed to the Soldiers' Brigade of Yemen. In August, local security forces conducted a raid in Tarim which killed five of their members, including leader Hamza al-Quaiti. The raid effectively dismantled what was a small, highly-localized cell of the larger al-Qaeda presence in the country, but the success was in some part interpreted as a total victory against al-Qaeda, as the State Department soon rescinded its evacuation order citing an improvement in the local security situation.
In response to the raid, the Soldiers' Brigade of Yemen issued a statement through the jihadist internet forum al-Ikhlas on August 19 threatening revenge for the killing of Quaiti. This was followed by AQSAP posting a teaser on September 9 for an upcoming issue of Sada al-Malahem, a common indicator of an attack being imminent. Furthermore, al-Ikhlas began advertising a "special message" from Osama bin Laden set to commemorate the September 11 attacks. American officials feared Bin Laden could use the message to encourage an attack in Yemen. However, al-Ikhlas was shut down, possibly by the National Security Agency, on the evening of September 10, preventing the release of new jihadist material and relieving embassy personnel.
Attack
The attack involved seven militants, each armed and equipped with suicide vests, and two explosive-laden Suzuki jeeps. The vehicles were modified with improvised armor and holes in their roofs for gunmen. The plan was to have one vehicle detonate at the main gate of the embassy compound and breach it, allowing the other vehicle and fighters on the ground to enter and raid the chancery, where they would kill as many people as possible. To reach the gate, the group impersonated a Yemeni government delegation, fitting their vehicles with paint jobs and license plates consistent with those used by the military while wearing Central Security Forces (CSF) fatigues. They were likely attempting to capitalize off an early morning attack during Ramadan, as the security would potentially be less attentive and most nearby businesses were closed.
The two vehicles successfully passed by a cordon on the street to the embassy ran by the CSF at around 9:10 a.m. local time. At 9:13 a.m., one vehicle approached the first entrance checkpoint at the northern edge of the embassy. A militant told the two guards manning the checkpoint they were transporting a military general for a meeting with ambassador Stephen Seche. Already suspicious due to the rarity of Seche conducting meetings at the embassy itself, one of the guards began to approach the vehicle before a gunman appeared from the roof hole and opened fire. The approaching guard ran to cover, but his partner, Mukhtar al-Faqih, waited a few more seconds to close the drop arm barrier at the checkpoint while sounding the alarm before he was gunned down.
As this happened, three other militants exited the vehicle and killed a nearby CSF soldier. Around 20 seconds later, the other vehicle containing a driver and passenger reached the scene. One of the militants managed to lift the dragon's teeth at the checkpoint and allowed for the convoy to pass through. The two vehicles and the three gunmen on the ground headed through the external embassy access road. With the plot foiled and security forces alerted, the occupants of the first vehicle decided to go against the plan and rammed their car bomb into a military technical parked adjacent to the gate. Numerous civilians waiting in line by the gate were killed by the blast and the shooting.
The first vehicle failed to blow open the gate as planned, forcing rest of the group to search for weak points from which they could breach the embassy. From 9:15 a.m. onwards, CCTV footage exhibited several militants probing the front of the embassy on foot while firing through openings in the walls and across the road. The drivers of the second vehicle spent several minutes looking for a point to attack before deciding on the pedestrian entrance in the parking lot. At around 9:22 a.m., once the three gunmen took cover, the two occupants drove into the wall around 50 yards from the main gate and detonated their vehicle.
The second bomb failed to breach the wall of the embassy. The propane tanks fitted in the vehicle to amplify the explosion were instead sent flying across the area. With no way to enter, the three remaining gunmen continued firing their weapons at the embassy but did not harm anyone. At around 9:33 a.m., they opened fire at a fire truck arriving at the scene, forcing it to retreat. Shortly afterwards, one of the gunmen set off their suicide vest next to a wall near the gate in an attempt to create an opening, but was unsuccessful. Another militant later attempted the same thing and failed. The final militant then returned near the checkpoint from which they entered and detonated his vest. He may have attempted to surrender to a police officer while cooking a grenade, though the officer managed to retreat before he blew himself up. The militants were in control of the area for a total of 42 minutes.
Embassy personnel response
Seche was in his office on the third floor of the chancery when the first explosion occurred. He ran down the hallway to the office of the Regional Security Officer (RSO), Nicholas Collura, intending to coordinate with him. After realizing he was not present, he went to Post 1, the "command-and-control center" of the embassy, where he was let in by a Marine Security Guard. Viewing the remaining security cameras active at the blast site, Seche noted the attackers "didn't look like they were in a hurry... these men had just killed a lot of people, executing some of them, but on the screen they looked too casual to be murderers." He grew increasingly frustrated as Yemeni security forces failed to neutralize the attackers.
At his office on the first floor of the chancery, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) legal attaché Richard Schwein guided two female colleagues into a safe room immediately after the explosion before informing FBI headquarters and his assistant Susan Ostrobinski, who was in Ethiopia at the time, of an attack. Collura was at the nearby British embassy when he received a call at 9:15 a.m. informing him of the attack, whereupon he drove to the front of the US embassy and found Yemeni security forces pinned down by gunfire. Fearing the embassy had been breached, he ran to a back door of the compound, which was locked, before going to a CSF base adjacent to the northwest corner of the compound, where he unsuccessfully attempted to convince a group of CSF soldiers to mobilize, even with a Yemeni surveillance detection officer translating his orders.
Collura and the officer then went by themselves to the northeastern corner of the compound wall near where the attackers were present. An auxiliary gate controlled remotely by Post 1 was a turn away from the corner. Collura phoned Post 1 and coordinated to quickly open the gate and allow them to enter before shutting it. As the two were making their first attempt, the second car bomb detonated nearby, knocking them to the ground and forcing them to retreat to cover unnoticed. The second attempt, which took place just after the final militant had died, was successful. Once inside, Collura went to Post 1 to establish contact with Seche. He then met with Schwein and formulated a team to secure the rest of the compound. After arming themselves, they set out to retrieve stranded civilians before searching every building in the compound. At 9:58 a.m., Collura declared to embassy staff that the threat was neutralized.
David Turnbull, a former consular officer at the embassy, recalled the alarm system sounding off in the building before the first explosion, whereupon he and others were ordered into a duck and cover position for more than an hour and a half as the attack took place. He and his colleagues counted six explosions and gunfire, but noted that it was "uncomfortably quiet" apart from that. The staff was escorted to a safe room at around 11:00 a.m. followed by people in the consular waiting room. While Seche gave periodic status updates, embassy section heads worked throughout the situation as he helped the spokesperson with answering calls from international media and nurses tended to wounded guards. Later in the day, the embassy was evacuated by a military escort.
Casualties
Including the perpetrators, a total of 20 people died in the attack. The toll was originally reported as 17 people prior to the death of three injured civilians days afterwards and the revelation that seven militants took part in it and not six as originally reported by media. The final death toll included seven attackers, five CSF soldiers, Mukhtar al-Faqih (classified by the State Department as a Foreign Service National), and seven civilians. No American diplomats or embassy personnel were harmed. A further three Yemeni security officers and seven civilians were injured, some of whom were children living across the street to the embassy.
This casualty toll made it the most significant terrorist attack in Yemen since the USS Cole bombing of 2000. It was the deadliest attack on a US government facility outside of Iraq or Afghanistan, both civilian and military, since the September 11 attacks, and the deadliest against an American embassy since the 1998 bombings.
Among those listed as civilian casualties included 26-year-old Indian nurse Rani Krishnani, who was commuting to work when she was killed by a car bomb detonation, and Susan Elbaneh, an 18-year-old Yemeni-American high school senior and native of Lackawanna, New York. Elbaneh had recently married her Yemeni husband, Abdul Jaleel, prior to the attack. The two were waiting in line outside the embassy in order file paperwork for Jaleel to move to the US when they were both killed. She was the only American who died in the attack.
Susan was a cousin of fellow Lackawanna native Jaber Elbaneh, one of the FBI's most wanted militants in Yemen for allegedly being a high-profile al-Qaeda member and former Lackawanna Six associate. Federal agents visited the Elbaneh residence in Lackawanna later on the day of the attack and confirmed the familial connection. They were told by Susan's relatives that she had not been in contact with Jaber since she was a young girl. The officials viewed the linkage as simply a coincidence and assured that "she's not a bad guy." Elbaneh family members publicly rejected any connections made between Susan and the attack which killed her, calling her a victim of terrorism.