US pounds Al Qaeda in Yemen with more than 20 strikes

WASHINGTON/ADEN — The United States said it carried out more than 20 precision strikes in Yemen targeting Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula on Thursday, in what appeared to be the first major operations against the group since a January raid by US commandos.

The Pentagon said the strikes, which were first reported by Reuters, targeted Al Qaeda militants, heavy weapons systems, equipment, infrastructure and fighting positions. 

They were carried out in the Yemeni governorates of Abyan, Al Bayda and Shabwah.

"The strikes will degrade the AQAP's ability to coordinate external terror attacks and limit their ability to use territory seized from the legitimate government of Yemen as a safe space for terror plotting," Navy Captain Jeff Davis said, using an acronym for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The January 29 raid, the first of its kind authorised by new President Donald Trump, was hailed as a success by the White House and other US officials. 

Still, critics questioned the value and effectiveness of an operation which killed women and children, as well as several militants and a Navy SEAL.

Trump, citing information from his defence secretary, told Congress on Tuesday that the raid yielded valuable intelligence that would "lead to many more victories in the future”.

At least nine dead

The US military did not estimate the number of militants killed in the strikes, but residents and local officials in southern Yemen said that at least nine suspected Al Qaeda militants died in two separate incidents.

They said four men believed to belong to Al Qaeda died in a strike on a building in Al Saeed, an area of Shabwah province home to Al Awaleq, the extended clan of Anwar Al Awlaki, a militant and US citizen killed in by US drone in 2011.

Another five suspected Al Qaeda fighters died when a missile fired by a drone struck a vehicle carrying weapons while traveling on a road between Al Wadie district and the area of Moujan, in Abyan province, some 40km away, according to a local official.

In a separate incident, residents and local officials in the Gulf of Aden town of Shuqra in southern Yemen also reported air strikes in an adjacent mountain area where hundreds of Al Qaeda militants are believed to be based.

They said they heard loud explosions early on Thursday morning in Al Maraqisha, a rugged mountainous area where Al Qaeda militants took refuge last year after they were driven out of Yemeni cities they had captured earlier.

There were no immediate details available on damages or casualties caused by those strikes.

Intelligence on AQAP

AQAP boasts one of the world’s most feared bomb makers, Ibrahim Hassan Al Asiri, and it has been a persistent concern to the US government ever since a 2009 attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.

The militant group has taken advantage of a civil war pitting the Iran-aligned Houthis against the Saudi-backed government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to try to widen its control and influence in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country, one of the poorest in the Middle East.

It was not immediately clear if information from the January raid contributed to Thursday’s strikes. 

A senior US official said earlier that day the intelligence collected provided insight into AQAP’s explosives manufacturing, targeting, training and recruitment practices.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, stressed that such insight was particularly important given the threat that AQAP has long posed.

Yemen’s war, which had drawn in a Saudi-led Arab alliance against the Houthis, has killed more than 10,000 people, according to United Nations officials.