 Kyrgyz court convicts three over China embassy attack Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (AFP) June 28, 2017 - A court in Kyrgyzstan has jailed three people convicted of orchestrating a bomb attack on China's embassy last year, a court spokesman said Wednesday. At least three people were wounded when a vehicle driven by a suicide bomber exploded after ramming through a gate at the embassy in the capital of the Central Asian country in August 2016. Khasamidin Ismailov was sentenced to 18 years in prison by the court in Bishkek on Tuesday, while Hikmatillo Abdulazhanov and Kunazim Mansirova were both given 10-year sentences, the spokesman told AFP. All three defendants pleaded not guilty to charges of helping organise and finance the attack which was carried out by a man whom security services in Kyrgyzstan claimed was a member of an anti-Beijing Uighur separatist group. Their lawyers have said they will appeal. Kyrgyz authorities have also claimed, without offering proof, that the plot was hatched by Syria-based militants with ties to the ex-Soviet Muslim-majority country. Chinese state media reported Tuesday that Kyrgyz border troops had taken part in a joint anti-terror exercise with their Chinese colleagues in the restive Uighur-populated region of Xinjiang, which borders ex-Soviet Central Asia.
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Three Yemeni soldiers were killed Wednesday when suspected Al-Qaeda militants opened fire on a military zone in the country's Hadramawt province, a military source said.
"Three soldiers were killed in the attack on the first military zone in the Al-Qoton district, and the gunmen managed to get away," the source said, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to brief the media.
"We suspect the gunmen belong to Al-Qaeda," the source added.
Later, an officer was kidnapped at night in the southern province of Abyan by gunmen also suspected of belonging to Al-Qaeda, a security source said.
The source said the officer was part of the presidential guard in Aden, a neighbouring province where the government is based.
Al-Qaeda has flourished in Yemen as the country's civil conflict shows no sign of waning.
Its Yemeni offshoot, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, remains active in the vast region of Hadramawt, where a number of the extremist group's leaders are based.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the United States has intensified its air attacks on AQAP, which it considers the global jihadist network's most dangerous branch,
Abyan is among the provinces targeted by the US strikes.
Yemen's Saudi-backed government has for years battled Huthi rebels allied with Iran for control over the country, the most impoverished in the Arab world.
More than 8,000 people have been killed and 40,000 wounded since an Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia joined the Yemen war in 2015, according to the UN's World Health Organization.
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