Late Friday night, a US drone attacked and destroyed a vehicle in the Shabwa Province of southern Yemen, killing two unidentified people within. Residents from the area say they are unsure who the two slain people were.
As is always the case, however, the two slain men were described as “suspects” in reports on the attack, with some suggestion that they might conceivably be members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), speculation built primarily on AQAP being present in the province and the US having destroyed the vehicle.
This is the latest in an increasing number of US drone strikes that have been carried out in Yemen since President Trump took office. The US had been slowing its use of drones in areas where they weren’t directly militarily involved near the end of Obama’s last term.
The growing number of US strikes are bringing attention back to the US drone war, and the extreme lack of transparency the US has offered on drone strikes which are reported to have killed people, with the vast majority of such incidents never publicly commented on at all, and most of the slain left forever in the vague category of “suspects.”