5 Al-Qaeda members killed in alleged US strike in southern Yemen

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Five Al-Qaeda members have been killed in a strike blamed on the United States in southern Yemen, two Yemeni security sources tell AFP on Saturday.

“Residents of the area informed us of the US strike… five Al-Qaeda members were eliminated,” says a security source in Abyan province, which borders the seat of Yemen’s internationally recognized government in Aden.

“The US strike on Friday evening, north of Khabar Al-Maraqsha, killed five,” says a second source, referring to a mountainous area known to be used by Al-Qaeda.

The second security source adds that, though the names of those killed in the strike were not known, it was believed one of Al-Qaeda’s local leaders was among the dead.

Washington once regarded the group, known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as the militant network’s most dangerous branch.

Born in 2009 from the merger of Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni and Saudi factions, AQAP grew and developed in the chaos of Yemen’s war, which since 2015 has pitted the Iran-backed Houthi rebels against a Saudi-led coalition backing the government.

Earlier this month, the United States agreed on a ceasefire with the Houthis, who have controlled large swathes of Yemen for more than a decade, ending weeks of intense American strikes on rebel-held areas of the country.

The Houthis began firing at shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in November 2023, weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, prompting military strikes by the US and Britain beginning in January 2024.

The conflict in Yemen has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, although fighting decreased significantly after a UN-negotiated six-month truce in 2022.