Al-Qaeda affiliate blamed

2003-10-07 11:04

Washington - The United States has been told that a group believed to be affiliated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was responsible for the August killings of two aid workers in Eritrea, according to a state department document seen on Monday.

Eritrean investigators probing an August 10 attack on a vehicle in the Northern Red Sea region of the country - in which two local employees of the US-based aid group Mercy Corps International were killed - have blamed it on members of Eritrean Islamic Jihad, the document says.

"The attack ... was carried out by the Eritrean Islamic Jihad, according to Eritrean military authorities investigating the incident," it says.

The document, a quarterly security update from the US embassy in Asmara submitted to the state department last week, said the attack had reinforced the need for a ban on all official and non-official travel to the region.

The embassy said it had urged non-governmental organisations working for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to adhere to restrictions imposed by the United Nations and the Eritrean government.

"As a result of the attack, the mission requested that all NGOs implementing USAID programs to abide by the UN and GSE (Government of the State of Eritrea) travel ban into the Northern Red Sea region," it said.

On August 14, Mercy Corps said that two of its Eritrean employees had been killed four days earlier when about 10 men armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades attacked their vehicle.

It said it was unclear who was behind that attack and that it was not certain that its employees had been specifically targeted.

Eritrea has complained that Sudan is backing the Eritrean Islamic Jihad movement, which is allegedly linked to al-Qaeda network.

Sudan has denied the charges and in turn accused Eritrea of backing the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army. Asmara has denied those charges.

Eritrean Islamic Jihad is not mentioned at all in the state department's most recent "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report released earlier this year.

In addition, there are no entries for Eritrea in the current report's section on Africa.

- AFP