Sanaa: A drone strike near the Yemeni capital killed three suspected Al Qaida members including a militant wanted for a deadly attack on the US embassy in Sanaa, security officials said on Thursday.
They said the drone strike, believed to have been carried out by the United States, targeted a car near the village of Beit Al Ahmar in the Sanhan region, 15km southeast of Sanaa.
Three people were killed and two wounded, they said. Among the dead was Adnan Al Qadhi, a former jihadist fighter in Afghanistan and Al Qaida member wanted for a 2008 car bomb attack on the US embassy that killed six Yemeni soldiers and four civilians.
US drones deployed in the region have backed Yemeni forces in combating militants of Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the group’s Yemen branch, considered by Washington to be the most active and deadly.
AQAP took advantage of the weakness of Yemen’s central government during an uprising last year against now ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh, seizing large swathes of territory across the south. But after a month-long offensive in May launched by Yemeni troops, most militants fled to the more lawless desert regions of the east.
