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In the wake of American warnings about al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen, officials in the Arabian country claimed on Wednesday to have thwarted a major terrorist plot on their oil facilities. Now it turns out that wasn't exactly true. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Mohammed Salem Basindwa said earlier in the day that a large group of al-Qaeda militants were planning to seize and possibly blow up a large oil terminal in the province of Hadramout, and also use the attack to seize the southern cities of Mukalla and Bawzeer. The claim was reported by everyone from Al Jazeera to The New York Times, but it didn't take long for some experts to question whether the dubious reports about the attack were actually true.

Even the spokesperson for Yemen's embassy in Washington undercut the story by tweeting that Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula "doesn't have the man power nor the capabilities to capture a city the size of Mukkala." U.S. officials also said that claim of thwarting a large attack may have been premature, even if Hadramout is a base of operations for Yemen and small attacks on oil facilities are quite common (even among non-al-Qaeda tribesman.) The U.S. also stressed that it didn't change their assessment of the larger threat that prompted them to close the Sanaa embassy and withdraw all non-essential personnel.