Yemeni Jews arrive in Israel on covert Jewish Agency mission

Sixteen Yemenite Jews arrived in Israel on Sunday afternoon in a secret immigration operation orchestrated by the Jewish Agency.

Jewish Agency representatives were seen of late in Yemen as part of their efforts to organize this mission, Arab media reported.

The Agency carried out a similar operation in March, when it rescued a family of 10 whose lived were apparently threatened by Al-Qaida agents in their native Yemen.

Yemenite Jews have the special protection of the President of Yemen Ali Abdallah Salah. In recent years, however, anti-Semitic attacks against Jews have spiralled out of control.

An appeals court on Sunday sentenced to death a Muslim convicted of killing a Yemeni Jew, overturning a previous verdict ordering the man to pay the victim's family a fine instead of facing capital punishment. More