Surprise! Islamists Seize a Yemeni City

From The New York Times:

Islamist militants consolidated control over a second city in southern Yemen on Sunday, seizing banks, government offices and the security headquarters as government forces responded with mortar fire.

The fall of the coastal city of Zinjibar to self-styled holy warriors who claimed to have “liberated” it from “the agents of the Americans” fed into Western fears that militants sympathetic to Al Qaeda could exploit the breakdown of authority to take control of territory.

The United States has until recently backed[Yemen’s embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh,] as an ally in the fight against Al Qaeda, whose Yemeni branch is considered one of the most active terrorist threats against the United States and Europe. The militants who took over the town of Jaar in March and Zinjibar this weekend are not known to have ties to Al Qaeda, but the volatile province of Abyan, where both cities are located, is filled with citizens who are sympathetic to the group.