WASHINGTON: A US airstrike in Yemen killed on Sunday eight operatives of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), including a key leader, said the Pentagon.
Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a spokesman, said the airstrike on April 23 killed Abu Ahmed Awlaqi, who had led AQAP operations in Shabwa province. Davis said he was a plotter of external attacks and had facilitated the extremist group’s transfer of weapons and explosives.
Davis said seven other AQAP operatives also were killed in the airstrike.
The strike targeted a car in which the suspects were traveling in the Rawda region of Shabwa province, according to a Yemeni official who preferred anonymity.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the US has intensified its air war against AQAP, regarded by Washington as the most dangerous branch of the extremist group.
The Pentagon said on April 3 that it had carried out more than 70 strikes against terror targets in Yemen since Feb. 28.
Al-Qaeda has taken advantage of the chaos caused by more than two years of civil war to expand its presence in Yemen.
US airstrike kills 8 AQAP terrorists in Yemen
US airstrike kills 8 AQAP terrorists in Yemen
Israel aims to bring ‘permanent demographic change’ to West Bank, Gaza: UN
- UN rights chief Volker Turk says Israeli military operation in West Bank’s north has displaced 32,000 Palestinians
GENEVA: Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip seem aimed at creating “permanent demographic change,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Thursday.
“Taken together, Israel’s actions appear aimed at making a permanent demographic change in Gaza and the West Bank, raising concerns about ethnic cleansing,” Turk said in a speech before the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Turk pointed in particular to an ongoing, year-long Israeli military operation in the West Bank’s north that has caused the displacement of 32,000 Palestinians.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, entire Bedouin herder communities have been displaced by increasing harassment and violence from Israeli settlers, including near Mikhmas to the east of Ramallah, and Ras Ein Al-Auja, in the Jordan Valley, since the start of the year.
In addition to roughly three million Palestinians, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements and outposts in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.
Israel has approved a series of initiatives this month backed by far-right ministers, including launching a process to register land in the West Bank as “state property” and allowing Israelis to purchase land there directly, in a move condemned by several countries as well as Hamas.
Israel’s current government has accelerated settlement expansion, approving a record 54 settlements in 2025, according to Israeli settlement watchdog NGO Peace Now.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
‘Maximum land, minimum Arabs’
In the Gaza Strip, most of the territory’s 2.2 million inhabitants have been displaced at least once since the start of the war sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
“Intensified attacks, the methodical destruction of entire neighborhoods and the denial of humanitarian assistance appeared to aim at a permanent demographic shift in Gaza,” the UN human rights office said in a report last week.
Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also vowed to encourage “emigration” from the Palestinian territories in February.
“We will finally, formally and in practical terms nullify the cursed Oslo Accords and embark on a path toward sovereignty, while encouraging emigration from both Gaza and Judea and Samaria,” he said, using the Biblical term for the West Bank.
“There is no other long-term solution,” added Smotrich, who himself lives in a settlement in the West Bank.
“They want maximum land and minimum Arabs,” Fathi Nimer, a researcher with Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, told AFP, referring to a commonly used phrase used to describe Israeli settlement tactics.
