Yemen

SANAA, Yemen — For 33 years, a small photograph of President Ali Abdullah Saleh ran every day on the top left corner of the front page of al-Thawra, the government newspaper. On Feb. 1, a new editor aligned with Yemen's populist revolt removed the photo. The next day, armed tribesmen stormed the gates. Terrified journalists fled the building, leaving Saleh's loyalists in control of the paper. On Feb. 3, the president's image was back on the front page, in color, along with an apology.

SANAA, YEMEN — The United States on Sunday warned citizens in Yemen to consider leaving the country as violence escalated between government loyalists and protesters seeking the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The State Department upgraded its travel warning for the country, saying the embassy's ability to assist in the event of a crisis was "very limited. " Officials described the security threat as "extremely high due to terrorist activities and civil unrest. " The warning came a day after British officials issued similar warnings to their citizens.

The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, U.S. officials said. One of the installations is being established in Ethi­o­pia, a U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the Somali militant group that controls much of that country. Another base is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of "hunter-killer" drones resumed operations this month after an experimental mission demonstrated that the unmanned aircraft could effectively patrol Somalia from there.

A U.S. drone aircraft fired on two leaders of a militant Somali organization tied to al-Qaeda, apparently wounding them, a senior U.S. military official familiar with the operation said Wednesday. The strike last week against senior members of al-Shabab comes amid growing concern within the U.S. government that some leaders of the Islamist group are collaborating more closely with al-Qaeda to strike targets beyond Somalia, the military official said. The airstrike makes Somalia at least the sixth country where the United States is using drone aircraft to conduct lethal attacks, joining Afghanistan , Pakistan , Libya , Iraq and Yemen . And it comes as the CIA is expected to begin flying armed drones over Yemen in its hunt for al-Qaeda operatives.

IT'S BEEN 10 years since the first strike by an armed U.S. drone killed an al-Qaeda leader and five associates in Yemen. Since then, according to unofficial counts, there have been more than 400 "targeted killing" drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia — countries where the United States is not fighting a conventional war. About 3,000 people have been killed, including scores — maybe hundreds — of civilians. And though the United States is winding down its military mission in Afghanistan, the Obama administration, as The Post's Greg Miller reported last week, "expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years.

Osama bin Laden spent his final years struggling to exert authority over the al-Qaeda network he founded, voicing dismay about the decisions of regional affiliates and drafting orders for often unresponsive subordinates even just one week before he was killed, according to documents released Thursday. The letters, part of a trove of material recovered during the U.S. raid on bin Laden's compound last year, include chilling admonitions to remain focused on killing Americans.

One year after a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in an act of defiance that would ignite protests and unseat long-standing dictatorships, a harsh chill is settling over the Arab world. The peaceful demonstrations in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen that were supposed to bring democracy have instead given way to bloodshed and chaos, with the forces of tyranny trying to turn back the clock. It is too soon to say that the Arab Spring is gone, never to resurface. But the Arab Winter has clearly arrived.

The House and Senate intelligence committees announced plans Wednesday to draft new laws against leaks of classified information, adding to an uproar on Capitol Hill over a series of recent stories that revealed details of terrorism threats and CIA programs. Citing "the accelerating pace of such disclosures," the two committees said in a joint statement that they planned to "act immediately" by bolstering legal restrictions and putting new pressure on the Obama administration to stanch the flow of secrets.

SANAA, YEMEN -- Yemen's president vowed over the weekend to track down al-Qaeda militants who refuse to renounce terrorism, as President Obama affirmed in a magazine interview that he has no plans at the moment to send troops to Yemen in response to concerns that the terrorist network's presence has become more dangerous in that country. The comments by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a longtime ruler who has been accused of vacillating about his country's Islamic extremists, underscored a growing sense in Yemen that his government could be imperiled if stronger actions are not taken.

Staff writers Peter Finn, Sholnn Freeman, Hamil Harris, Carrie Johnson, Paul Kane, Glenn Kessler, Anne E. Kornblut, Kari Lydersen, Ben Pershing and Joe Stephens; staff researcher Julie Tate; foreign correspondent Sudarsan Raghavan in Sanaa, Yemen, and special correspondent Karla Adam in London contributed to these reports.