Murder suspects could be part of terror cell

SAN'A, Yemen -- The two men accused of killing three American missionaries and a prominent Yemeni politician may be part of a larger terrorist cell that planned to attack foreigners and secular leaders in Yemen, a security official said Wednesday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators developed the idea during interrogations of Abed Abdul Razak Kamel, who is suspected in the American missionaries' killing.

Kamel is believed to be a Muslim extremist, as is Ali al-Jarallah, who is accused of killing veteran politician Jarallah Omar on Saturday. The U.S. Embassy said earlier this week it could not say if there was a terrorist link in the missionaries' death.

The official news agency Saba has quoted an official as saying Kamel told interrogators that he plotted the attack with al-Jarallah.

Yemeni officials will not say how many people have been arrested in the attack. But one official said "scores of suspects" had been detained.

The sole casualty who survived Monday's attack, Donald W. Caswell, 49, of Levelland, Texas, attended a memorial service Wednesday in San'a for his three dead colleagues from the Baptist hospital in Jibla, a town 125 miles south of the capital.

Caswell, who is a pharmacist at the hospital, was shot in the stomach after the gunman had killed three other American staff members. On his release, he and other American staff members were brought to San'a on Tuesday in U.S. Embassy vehicles.

Williams spoke of the needs of the people of Jibla and, referring to the victims by their first names, said: "The real tragedy here is that the people that Bill, Kathy and Martha loved are the very ones who might be blamed for the tragedy, and they shouldn't be."

The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention has identified those killed as purchasing agent Kathleen A. Gariety, 53, of Wauwatosa, Wis.; Dr. Martha C. Myers, 57, of Montgomery, Ala.; and hospital director William E. Koehn, 60, of Kansas.

Also Wednesday, tens of thousands of people gathered Wednesday for the funeral of Omar, the deputy leader of the Socialist party. He was shot Saturday after speaking as a guest at an Islamic party's congress.

Yemeni officials said Tuesday that they have strong suspicions Kamel, the suspect in the missionaries' killing, is linked to the al-Qaida terror group. Yemen is Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland and has been a fertile recruiting ground for al-Qaida.

At a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the government urged police and security forces to redouble their efforts "to trace those connected with these horrible criminal acts," Saba reported. It also called on religious leaders to preach sermons that support "moderate Islam."

Gariety's body was to be flown to the United States. Myers and Koehn, who each spent more than two decades as missionaries in Yemen, were buried in a cemetery in the hospital grounds on Tuesday.

Yemen has been a key front in the U.S.-led war on terrorism and its government signed on as Washington's partner after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But anti-American sentiment is high in Yemen over Washington's perceived support for Israel and the standoff with Iraq.