Drone strike kills 2 Qaeda suspects in Yemen
Filipina nurse freed after brief abduction
SANAA, Dec 24, (AFP): Two Al-Qaeda members, including a Jordanian, were killed in a suspected US drone strike in Yemen on Monday, government and tribal sources said.
“A drone strike targeted a vehicle killing two al-Qaeda members — a Yemeni and a Jordanian” in Manaseh of central Bayda province, around 170 kms (105 miles) southeast of Sanaa, a local government official said requesting anonymity.
A security official identified one of the militants killed as Abdullah Hussein al-Waeli, an alQaeda member from Marib province who was wanted after he escaped from prison two years ago. No details were given on the Jordanian.
Tribal sources said three other militants were wounded in the attack.
Al-Qaeda had declared an Islamic emirate in nearby Radaa earlier this year, shortly before being driven out by tribal militiamen.
Tareq al-Dahab, who led the al-Qaeda fighters in the January raid on the town, was shot dead in February.
Dahab was a brother-in-law of slain US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi, who was killed in a suspected US drone strike in September.
US drones have backed Yemeni forces combating militants of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group’s Yemen branch, considered by Washington to be the most active and deadliest franchise of the global jihadist network.
Yemeni security services freed a Filipina nurse two hours after she was kidnapped in Sanaa, state news agency Saba reported Monday, adding that her abductors have been arrested.
“Security services arrested two outlaws after they kidnapped a Filipina national late on Sunday in the capital Sanaa,” Saba quoted an interior ministry spokesman as saying.
The men were arrested within two hours of carrying out the kidnap, the source said, identi- fying the woman taken hostage as 20-year-old Annie Jones, a nurse at a government hospital in Sanaa. She was released unharmed, according to the spokesman.
No details were immediately available on the identities of the kidnappers and the reasons behind the abduction.
The kidnap was the second of foreigners in Sanaa within a 48-hour period. Security forces are still searching for two Finns and an Austrian who were kidnapped, suspectedly by al-Qaedalinked gunmen, in the capital on Friday.
A security official had last week warned that al-Qaeda had threatened to kidnap foreigners and to stage bank hold-ups if the authorities fail to release members of an imprisoned network.
Hundreds of people have been abducted in Yemen over the past 15 years, many of them by members of the country’s powerful tribes who use them as bargaining chips in disputes with the authorities.