0 What’s Going On with the earthquake swarm in The Gulf of Aden?

USGS is reporting a very unusual swarm of significant earthquakes starting early this morning in the sea between Africa and the Arabian peninusla, right off the coast of Yemen, and in one of the world’s most important and busiest shipping lanes.

But, earthquake swarms happen, even in places that are not normally known for seismic activity...
so what’s unusual about this particular group of earthquakes?
In this case, it seems that the vast majority of the quakes are happening at
almost exactly a depth of 10 kilometers; over 20 earthquakes have occurred at that depth since the swarm began. I’m no statistician, but that seems like a pretty exceptionally unlikely scenario, especially when the region was entirely quiet in terms of seismic activity as of yesterday. It would definitely be interesting to see what real geologists make of it.
Below is a screenshot from the USGS earthquake tracking site, taken early afternoon today, and covering today and yesterday’s major seismic activity worldwide; We’ll update with more information if anything newsworthy develops.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

 It just so happens that the below was taking place at the same time....

Yemen: US steps up covert war

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The US has stepped up flights by pilotless drones and increased the deployment of special forces and CIA operatives in the Middle Eastern nation of Yemen. The US military and CIA have been covertly operating in Yemen since at least 2002.

Predator with mounted Hellfire Missile

The November 7 Washington Post quoted unnamed US officials as saying that drones operating over Yemen now included Hellfire missile-equipped Predators. The article said that “up to 100” extra US “Special Operations force trainers” and an unspecified number of “additional CIA teams” were being deployed.
The pretext for this rise in aggression was two parcel bombs mailed from Yemen to Jewish organisations in Chicago that were discovered on cargo planes in Dubai and Britain on October 29, after tip-offs from Saudi intelligence.
The bombs were mailed with a sender’s address: that of medical student Hanan al-Samawi, who was detained with her mother until Yemeni police concluded she was the victim of identity theft.
The US has accused 28-year-old Yemen-based Saudi exile Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri of being the “master bomb maker” responsible for the parcel bombs and other recent attacks.