Yemeni officials say that a US drone attacked a vehicle outside of the city of Marib today, killing the four people within. They termed the four “suspected militants” though they conceded they had no identification for any of them.
It is the second significant drone strike in the past few days, as US drones attacked a farmhouse in Abyan Province on Thursday, killing nine people, one of those identified as a local leader of an al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) faction.
The Marib Province has seen considerable AQAP activity over the last several years, and the main highway in Yemen goes through the province, making it a dangerous journey from Sanaa to the more outlying parts of the nation.
The US has been keen to escalate drone strikes in southern and central Yemen in recent months, hoping to bolster the current Yemeni regime’s military offensives in the area. The strikes have fueled opposition as well, but so far they have had minimal political recourse in the post-Saleh rule.