Kuwaiti, Saudi Qaeda suspects among 4 killed in drone attacks
Saudi, Kuwaiti Qaeda suspects among 4 killed in drone attacks
SANAA: Warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition bombed targets in Yemen yesterday, residents said, and sources in the country’s dominant Houthi militia reported at least 16 people were killed.
The coalition has been bombarding Iran-allied Houthi forces and allied army units since March in a campaign to restore exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. Houthi sources said six people including a woman and a child were killed and six wounded in a dawn air strike on the al Jaraf neighborhood of the capital Sanaa. The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency reported 10 people were killed by Saudi-led aerial attacks on a building in Bayt Al-Faqih city in the southwestern province of al Hodeida. Air strikes were also carried out on Faj Attan mountain overlooking Sanaa, home to a military base and a weapons depot that have been a frequent target of raids in the course of the three-monthold war in the Arabian Peninsula country. In the dawn attack, warplanes also hit the ministry of communications building, the Houthi-controlled Saba news agency reported, setting it on fire and destroying nearby buildings.
The warplanes staged a further attack on the capital around noon, but there was no immediate word on casualties or damage. Hadi fled in February to Saudi Arabia, where he remains, after the Houthis swept out of their northwestern stronghold and captured Sanaa last September, pushing Hadi’s government aside and then extending their control to large parts of Yemen.
Saba also reported mortar attacks by al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islah party against homes in the Hasb district of the southwestern province of Taiz. The report could not immediately be confirmed. Meanwhile, a drone attacked an army base held by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in southeastern Yemen in Friday’s early hours, killing four suspected militants, witnesses said.
The base is near Al-Mukulla, a port city which has been the target of several drones attacks in recent weeks including one that killed Nasser Al-Wuhayshi, the leader of AQAP, one of the most active branches of the Al-Qaeda militant network. The United States acknowledges using drones to combat AQAP in Yemen as part of its global counter-terrorism effort, but does not comment publicly on individual attacks. AQAP’s several thousand fighters are seen by Washington as a serious anti-Western threat that could exploit the chaos of Yemen’s war to expand and recruit.
AQAP has carried out attacks on the Houthis, seen as a foe due to their Iranian alliance and adherence to a form of Shiite Islam, but has not become a leading combatant in the conflict.
On Thursday, the US State Department called for a “humanitarian pause” in the conflict during the current Muslim holy month of Ramadan to allow international aid organizations to deliver urgently needed food, medicine, and fuel. The United Nations on Wednesday had designated the war in Yemen as a Level 3 humanitarian crisis, its most severe category.
Drone attack A Saudi and a Kuwaiti are among four suspected Al-Qaeda members killed by an American drone strike in southeastern Yemen, a local official said yesterday. The dawn strike targeted their car as it left the base of the 27th Mechanized Brigade in the Hadramawt provincial capital Mukalla, the official said. Fighters from the Sunni extremist group seized the camp from forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in April, consolidating their grip on Mukalla.
They have exploited months of fighting between Hadi loyalists and Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels to consolidate their grip on Yemen’s southeast.
The official identified the victims as Shuaib Al-Maliki of Saudi Arabia and the Kuwaiti Abdul Aziz Al-Otaibi, along with two Yemenis. Their deaths bring to 13 the number of suspected AlQaeda militants killed by similar strikes in Yemen over the past 10 days, and follows the death of the second-in-command of AlQaeda’s global network.
The group confirmed on June 16 the killing by an American drone strike of Nasir Al-Wuhayshi, who headed Al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch. Washington regards that branch, known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as its most dangerous and has kept up a drone war despite the pullout of US troops from Yemen in March as the country’s war worsened. The US still has drones and other aircraft at bases in Saudi Arabia and Djibouti. —AFP