‘US’ air strikes take out top Yemen Qaeda leaders
Suspected US air strikes took out a raft of top Al Qaeda leaders in
Yemen barely two weeks after a drone killed US-born jihadist cleric
Anwar al-Awlaqi, provincial and tribal sources said on Saturday.
The seven killed in last evening's triple raid included a son and
cousin of Awlaqi, as well as three other members of his tribe and the
media chief of Al Qaeda's feared Yemen arm, the sources told AFP.
The Yemeni defence ministry confirmed that seven Al Qaeda militants,
including its regional media chief, had been killed in a raid.
But it reiterated its standard denial of US involvement in offensive
operations on Yemeni soil and insisted its own forces carried it out.
A member of the Awlaqi tribe said the tribal members killed included
Awlaqi's 21-year-old son Abderrahman and Sarhan al-Qussa'a, brother of
Fahd al-Qussa'a, a leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula he said
was on a US wanted list.
The defence ministry said that AQAP's Egyptian media chief Ibrahim
al-Banna'a was also among the dead, describing him as wanted
"internationally" for "planning attacks both inside and outside Yemen."
Banna'a was "in charge of the media arm of AQAP" and was one of the group's "most dangerous operatives," the ministry said.
The trio of strikes came in the militant-held town of Azzan in Shabwa
province, one of three in Yemen's restive southeast that Al-Qaeda has
turned into strongholds.
"Three strikes, apparently American, which were launched against
positions held by Al-Qaeda militants in Azzan, one of the group's
bastions, killed seven of them," a Shabwa provincial official said.
Source: Asianage
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