ADEN: A drone strike killed four suspected Al-Qaeda fighters in central Yemen on Monday, a local official said.
The United States is the only force known to operate armed drones over Yemen.
“A car carrying four fighters was hit as it drove on a mountain road” in Bayda province, the official said. “All of them were killed.”
“The fighters were from Al-Qaeda,” he said.
Washington considers the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to be the radical group’s most dangerous branch.
AQAP has flourished in the chaos of the country’s civil war, which pits the Saudi-backed government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi against the Houthi Shiite rebels.
A long-running drone war against AQAP has intensified since US President Donald Trump took office in January.
An air raid he ordered that month killed a US Navy SEAL and several Yemeni civilians in Bayda.
US strikes in Yemen have typically targeted suspected Al-Qaeda fighters, but last month the United States said it had killed dozens of fighters from its jihadist rival, the Daesh group, at training camps in Bayda.
Drone strike ‘kills four Qaeda suspects’ in Yemen
Drone strike ‘kills four Qaeda suspects’ in Yemen
US makes plans to reopen embassy in Syria after 14 years
- The administration has been considering re-opening the embassy since last year
- Trump told reporters on Friday that Al-Sharaa was “doing a phenomenal job” as president
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration has informed Congress that it intends to proceed with planning for a potential re-opening of the US Embassy in Damascus, Syria, which was shuttered in 2012 during the country’s civil war.
A notice to congressional committees earlier this month, which was obtained by The Associated Press, informed lawmakers of the State Department’s “intent to implement a phased approach to potentially resume embassy operations in Syria.”
The Feb. 10 notification said that spending on the plans would begin in 15 days, or next week, although there was no timeline offered for when they would be complete or when US personnel might return to Damascus on a full-time basis.
The administration has been considering re-opening the embassy since last year, shortly after longtime strongman Bashar Assad was ousted in December 2024, and it has been a priority for President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Turkiye and special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack.
Barrack has pushed for a deep rapprochement with Syria and its new leadership under former rebel Ahmad Al-Sharaa and has successfully advocated for the lifting of US sanctions and a reintegration of Syria into the regional and international communities.
Trump told reporters on Friday that Al-Sharaa was “doing a phenomenal job” as president. “He’s a rough guy. He’s not a choir boy. A choir boy couldn’t do it,” Trump said. “But Syria’s coming together.”
Last May, Barrack visited Damascus and raised the US flag at the embassy compound, although the embassy was not yet re-opened.
The same day the congressional notification was sent, Barrack lauded Syria’s decision to participate in the coalition that is combating the Daesh militant group, even as the US military has withdrawn from a small, but important, base in the southeast and there remain significant issues between the government and the Kurdish minority.
“Regional solutions, shared responsibility. Syria’s participation in the D-Daesh Coalition meeting in Riyadh marks a new chapter in collective security,” Barrack said.
The embassy re-opening plans are classified and the State Department declined to comment on details beyond confirming that the congressional notification was sent.
However, the department has taken a similar “phased” approach in its plans to re-open the US Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, following the US military operation that ousted former President Nicolás Maduro in January, with the deployment of temporary staffers who would live in and work out of interim facilities.
