SANAA

A senior operative from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula movement conceded Sunday that movement fighters had committed mistakes during an early December attack on Yemeni Defense Ministry headquarters that left 52 civilians and military personnel dead and more than 167 others injured.

"We did not aim to target civilians at the Defense Ministry complex hospital," Qassem al-Rimi said. "We shoulder full responsibility for the problems that happened and we are ready to pay compensation for this," he added in a video on the website of the movement.

The December 5 violence erupted after roughly 70 militants stormed the Defense Ministry building and fought with army soldiers inside the ministry. Many of the fatalities involved doctors and medics working in the ministry's hospital in the compound.

Al-Rimi asserted his movement had not instructed its militants to target doctors in the ministry's hospital.

"This attack does not express the ideas of the movement," al-Rimi said in the video.

He said movement leaders had told the attackers to avoid attacking prayer houses and the hospital inside the ministry's complex, but one of the attackers did not mind this piece of information.

"Attacking hospitals had never been an al-Qaeda tactic," al-Rimi said. "There are many Defense Ministry hospitals in the country, but we never attacked them, although none of them is well guarded," he added.

He said the attack had primarily targeted the Defense Ministry command, which according to him, had turned into an operations room for US drone attacks against Yemenis. 

by Saddam al-Kamali

englishnews@aa.com.tr