US drone strikes kill terrorists
FIGHTING IN MOKHA HAS TRIGGERED MASSIVE WAVE OF NEWLY DISPLACED PEOPLE, UN SAYS
At least seven Al Qaida members killed in four separate raids barely a month after a controversial US commando strike against the terror group |
Four separate US drone strikes killed at least seven suspected Al Qaida members in Yemen yesterday, security officials said, barely a month after a controversial US commando raid against the militants.
A dawn strike targeted the home of a known Al Qaida member in the Yashbum Valley in the southern province of Shabwa province, a provincial security official told AFP.
Four suspected militants who had been standing outside the house were killed, he said.
A second strike, on Al Qayfa in Bayda province, further north, killed three suspected Al Qaida members, a local official and a tribal chief said.
A third strike targeted the militants in the Sawmaa district of the province, the local official said.
And a fourth targeted an Al Qaida position east of Shaqra in the southern province of Abyan, a security source said.
Al Qaida briefly overran Shaqra early last month just days after the January 29 US raid on one of their compounds in Bayda province that cost the life of a Navy SEAL.
As many as 16 civilians — eight women and eight children — were also killed, a Yemeni provincial official said, drawing condemnation of the raid from human rights groups.
Civilians, children killed
The Pentagon has acknowledged non-combatants including children were killed in the raid, the first such operation of Donald Trump’s presidency.
The raid was widely criticised in the United States for its heavy civilian toll and the death of the Navy SEAL.
The militant group has exploited a power vacuum created by two years of war between Yemen’s Saudi-backed government and Iran-backed rebels.
Meanwhile, the UN has said that fighting around Yemen’s port of Mokha has forced some 45,000 people from their homes, with many facing continued uncertainty and the threat of further displacement.
Shabia Mantoo, the Yemen spokeswoman for refugee agency UNHCR, told AFP that data compiled by her the agency and the UN Migration Agency (IOM) showed 45,000 people had been displaced in the last few weeks from Mokha and the nearby town of Dhubab.
Fighting has intensified in recent weeks in the southwest of Yemen, where government forces are battling to retake large parts of the country seized by Iran-backed Al Houthi militants.
Government troops took Mokha on February 10 and announced they aimed to push north and liberate the country’s main Red Sea port of Hodeida next.
Mantoo said many of those fleeing the fighting around Mokha made their way north to Ibb district and to Hodeida province.
Al Houthis launched a deadly counter-offensive after losing control of Mokha last month but were overpowered as government troops consolidated their grip on the area, inching a few kilometres north and east.