UPDATE: New reports from Yemen show a U.S. drone strike killed seven suspected al-Qaida militants in Southern Yemen Wednesday. The Guardian reports that the strike follows a report that the Yemeni central government had foiled a major terrorist attack.
The plot is alleged to have been a plan for the take over of strategic ports as well as an attack on oil pipelines. These announcements follow days of heightened alerts, embassy evacuations and travel warnings stemming from U.S. intelligence reports of a credible al-Qaida plot.
The U.S. intelligence community claims that they intercepted conversations between al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, a franchise of the broader al-Qaida terrorist network. Yemeni officials speaking to the Associated Press believe that the plot may be in response to a November drone strike that critically wounded Said al-Shihri, Wuhayshi’s deputy who later died as a result of his injuries. Drone strikes have taken out high level al-Qaida targets, but there have also been a large number of civilian casualties. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that U.S. drone strikes and covert missions have killed up to 192 Yemeni civilians since 2002.
Original article:
A U.S. drone strike in Yemen has killed four people in an attack targeting suspected al-Qaida militants. The strike comes just days after a serious travel warning was issued and 19 U.S. diplomatic posts were closed across the Muslim world due to intelligence indicating a credible terrorist threat.
The unmanned drone reportedly fired a missile at a car carrying four men in the al-Arqeen district of Marib province, setting it on fire and killing them all.
Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, believed that one of the dead is Saleh Jouti, a senior al-Qaida member.
Some locals warn that years of U.S. drone strikes have terrorized communities and increased al-Qaida’s appeal. “Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants,” writes Yemeni writer Ibrahim Mothana in a New York Times op-ed earlier this year. “They are not driven by ideology but rather by a sense of revenge and despair.”
NBC news reports that previous to the strike, the current warning was elevated Tuesday resulting in the evacuation of 100 U.S. personnel from Yemen at dawn. The embassy officials were taken by U.S. Air Force C-17 from the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, to Ramstein air base in Germany.
Just days earlier, the U.S. State Department urged all Americans in Yemen to leave “immediately” because of an “extremely high” threat of a terrorist attack.
“The department urges U.S. citizens to defer travel to Yemen and those U.S. citizens currently living in Yemen to depart immediately,” the warning states.
These evacuations and security warnings stem from information indicating that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is plotting a serious, credible attack. These reports were confirmed by a U.S. intelligence official speaking to The Associated Press who claims that the current shutdown was instigated by an intercepted secret message between al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri and his deputy in Yemen about plans for a major terror attack.
Yemeni authorities involved in anti-terror operations released the names of 25 wanted al-Qaida suspects Monday, saying they were planning terrorist attacks in the capital, Sanaa and other cities across the country.
After suffering the loss of its leader, Osama bin Laden in 2011, al-Qaida has seen an apparent resurgence in recent months after a spate of prison breaks last month appears to have bolstered their ranks. One prison break in Libya resulted in the release of 1,200 prisoners in Libya and 500 more from an Iraqi prison near Baghdad.
The Baghdad prison break was carried out by al-Qaida militants who were able to free convicted senior members of al-Qaida, some of whom had received death sentences for previous crimes.
The U.S. drone strike in response to these threats could be the first in a series of preemptive attacks to come. CNN reports that U.S. Special Forces are now on high alert across the Middle East and North Africa. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and Africa Command (AFRICOM) are awaiting further information about the exact origin of the threats. These units were put on high alert by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last week.
Drones and U.S. covert operations have become controversial weapons in the U.S. anti-terror arsenal in recent years. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London claims that up to 1,173 civilians have been killed in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia since 2002 during drone strikes and covert operations.