It remains operational, despite both the US and the UK deciding to close their embassies in Sanaa

Spain on Sunday decided to restrict access to its embassy in Yemen in response to threats from Al Qaeda, and it’s understood from El Mundo newspaper that the building is to be closed to the public over Monday and Tuesday. It came after both the US and UK Embassies decided to close earlier in the day. The US Embassy in Sanaa was the first to make the move, announcing on its website, that their offices were closed, ‘in response to ongoing threats by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to attack American interests in Yemen’.

The UK’s Foreign Office later told the BBC that its embassy in Sanaa was closed for ‘security reasons’, and diplomatic sources quoted by Spain’s Cadena Ser are understood have confirmed that Spain had also decided to follow suit.

The top US General, David Petraeus, was in Yemen on Saturday, and pledged United States support for its fight with Al Qaeda, after announcing the previous day that US aid to Yemen to counter terrorism would increase substantially this year. Also on Saturday, the US President, Barack Obama, said the Nigerian passenger involved in the failed bomb attack on an aircraft flying to the United States on Christmas Day appears to have been trained by the Al Qaeda branch in Yemen.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack on the US Embassy in Sanaa in September 2008 which cost the lives of 19 people.

In the UK, Downing Street said in a statement on its website on Sunday that agreement had been reached with the Whitehouse to ‘continue working hand in glove to tackle the evolving threat of terrorism from Yemen and Somalia in the wake of recent events in the US’. (Via Original Source)