France24, Jan. 29, 2017 – The U.S. military said Sunday that one service member was killed and three others wounded in a raid in Yemen targeting its local al-Qaida branch.
The Central Command statement said 14 militants from al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen, formally known as “al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula,” were killed in the assault and that U.S. service members taking part in the raid captured “information that will likely provide insight into the planning of future terror plots.”
Yemeni security and tribal officials said the surprise dawn assault in Yemen’s central Bayda province killed three senior al-Qaida leaders: Abdul-Raouf al-Dhahab, Sultan al-Dhahab, and Seif al-Nims.
An official with al-Qaida said the Apache attack helicopters struck the area from the air before dropping commandos in for the raid, which took place near Yakla village in Radaa district. He too spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Just over a week ago, suspected U.S. drone strikes killed three other alleged al-Qaida operatives in Bayda in what was the first such killings reported in the country since Trump assumed the U.S. presidency.
The tribal officials said the Americans were looking for al-Qaida leader Qassim al-Rimi, adding that they captured and departed with at least two unidentified individuals.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, long seen by Washington as among the most dangerous branches of the global terror network, has exploited the chaos of Yemen’s civil war, seizing territory in the south and east.
The war began in 2014, when Shiite Houthi rebels and their allies swept down from the north and captured the capital, Sanaa. A Saudi-led military coalition has been helping government forces battle the rebels for nearly two years.
Separately, Yemen’s president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi a day earlier called for the remnants of his parliament, many of whom are in exile in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, to convene in the country’s southern port city of Aden, where he is struggling to establish government control.
(AP)