Three extremists affiliated with al Qaeda’s Yemeni cell were reportedly killed in a suspected U.S. airstrike in the country’s south on Tuesday.
The three individuals were traveling in a convoy through the Shabwa province in southern Yemen when their vehicle was hit, local Yemeni officials told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. Neither U.S. Central Command or the Pentagon have released statements on the incident, but officials claim the strike was carried out by an American drone.
U.S. forces launched over 100 airstrikes against the Yemeni cell in 2017 and over 200 airstrikes total since American air operations against the al Qaeda cell began in the country, according to figures compiled by the Washington-based think tank the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The recently high rate of airstrikes in Yemen, which accelerated under the Trump White House dwarfs the previous high of 46 strikes in 2016, ordered by former President Barack Obama.
American intelligence officials claim the terror group’s Yemeni faction, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), remains the organization’s best funded and most dangerous operational cell — which continues to actively plot terror attacks against targets in the U.S. and the West. The terror cell has long been a primary target for the U.S. counterterrorism mission in Yemen.
Tuesday’s strike comes less than a month after a pair of senior AQAP leaders were killed during a counterterrorism raid by government forces in the Abyan province’s Al-Wadiah district — a known al Qaeda enclave in southwest Yemen.
Murad Abdullah Mohammed al-Doubli, also known as Abu Hamza al-Batani, and Hassan Basurie were both killed in the predawn raid by members of Yemen’s Security Belt brigade forces. Those forces backed by troops from the Saudi-led coalition fighting to oust Iranian-backed Shia Houthi rebels from the country.
Tuesday’s strikes comes a day after the Trump White House opted to extend an executive order establishing a state of emergency in Yemen.
The executive order, initially drafted by the Obama administration, established a slew of punitive economic and political actions “to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” by certain factions within Yemen, according to a White House statement issued Monday.
• Carlo Muñoz can be reached at cmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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