US Drone Strike Kills 21 in Yemen, Including Civilians

At Least Five Bystanders Killed in Attack Along Highway

A US drone attacked a highway in Yemen’s southeastern Bayda Province, killing at least 21 people, including a number of civilian bystanders, and wounding many more.

The strike targeted a pickup truck carrying 16 people, and was apparently a “signature strike” on the assumption the truck was carrying al-Qaeda. Though none of the slain were identified, reports dubbed all 16 “suspected militants.

The other five slain and six wounded in the strike were in other nearby cars, and there wasn’t even a pretext of suspicion about any of them, all labeled civilian bystanders who just happened to be in the line of US fire.

Yemen’s government reported the attack as targeting unnamed “senior al-Qaeda fighters,” but offered no additional details. It is the seventh US drone strike against Yemen in two months.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.