Target Belgian Tourists Start date January 18, 2008 Attack type Ambush | Non-fatal injuries 4 Total number of deaths 5 Location Hadhramaut | |
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Perpetrators Unknown, possibly Al-Qaeda Location Hadhramaut Governorate, Yemen Similar 2007 attack on tourists in Yemen, 2014 Rada' bombings, 2009 Yemeni tourist att, 2014 Ibb bombing, January 2015 Sana'a b | ||
The 2008 Yemen tourist attack was an ambush attack on Belgian tourists traveling in a convoy through Hadhramaut in the Wadi Dawan desert valley on January 18, 2008.
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A convoy of four jeeps carrying 15 tourists to Shibam were ambushed by gunmen in a hidden pickup truck. Two Belgian women, Claudine Van Caillie, of Bruges, 63, and Katrine Glorie, from East Flanders, 54, as well as two Yemenis, a driver and a guide, were killed; another man was also heavily wounded, several others suffered minor wounds. The tourists were repatriated to Belgium on January 19, except the injured man, who remained in Sanaa.
In the wake of the attack, Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Karel De Gucht originally rejected that Al-Qaeda might be responsible, explaining that although the possibility could be avoided, internecine disputes and latent Islamism also to be taken into account. A number of arrests were made on January 21.