US Drone Strike Kills Three ‘Suspects’ in South Yemen

Second Attack in Three Days in the Area

For the second time in three days, a US drone has attacked a village in southern Yemen, this time hitting in Shabwa Province, and killed three “suspected” al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) members.

The attack was along Shabwa’s border with the neighboring Abyan Province, which is where the weekend attacks struck, killing six “suspects” in the town of Mahfad and also killed two of the people trying to rescue the wounded from the wreckage in a subsequent strike.

Today’s attack, like the weekend one, struck a car traveling from one town to the next, and Yemeni officials say that it actually targeted a pair of vehicles but “the other got away.”

And just like the weekend strike, there was no indication of the identity of any of the people killed beyond being dubbed suspects. Locals in those villages, many of which were de facto independent during the 2011 protests against the Saleh government, have complained that many of the drones are in fact killing random civilians.

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.