SANAA: Overnight air strikes that residents said were carried out by US warplanes killed 23 suspected Al Qaeda militants in mountains south of the Yemeni capital, security sources said on Saturday.
"Twenty-three Al-Qaeda fighters were killed in air raids launched late on Friday against their positions," one security source told AFP.
A police source gave the same death toll from the air strikes in a mountainous area of Al-Bayda province.
The sources said the raids hit three villages west of the provincial capital, also called Al-Bayda – Al Makhnaq, Al Dooqi and Al Mamdud.
Residents said the raids were carried out by US aircraft.
Yemen is the ancestral homeland of slain Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the jihadist network took advantage of a protracted anti-government uprising last year to seize large swathes of the south and east.
Washington has long made the country a major focus of its "war on terror".
