AL-MUKALLA: Two suspected Al-Qaeda militants were killed after an alleged US drone struck their home in Yemen’s central province of Marib, the latest in a series of similar strikes on Al-Qaeda in Yemen.
A large explosion shook the Al-Hosen region in Marib’s Wadi Abeda district, according to residents and a local journalist, when a missile blasted through a house owned by three unnamed persons, killing two and injuring another.
A journalist in Marib told Arab News that the strike in Al-Hosen killed two people, but he could not confirm if the deceased were members of Al-Qaeda.
On Jan. 30, a US drone attack in the Wadi Abeda district of Marib killed three Al-Qaeda members, including bomb-maker Hussein Hadboul and his brother. Yemeni security officials described Hadboul, also known as Hassan Al-Hadrami, as the most senior Al-Qaeda operative killed by a drone strike in recent months.
Hadboul was responsible for constructing bombs and other explosive devices that targeted security and military institutions around Yemen. Throughout the last six months, Al-Qaeda’s roadside bombs and IEDs have killed more than 70 soldiers and injured more than 170 as Yemeni government troops have advanced toward the militants’ rural and mountainous strongholds in the southern provinces of Shabwa and Abyan.
For more than two decades, the US has carried out secret drone operations in Yemen, killing hundreds of Al-Qaeda militants, including senior leaders, as well as civilians in Hadramout, Abyan, Al-Bayda, Marib and other Yemeni provinces.
Drone strikes have decreased dramatically over the last five years, with most of them concentrated in the central Yemeni province of Marib, after the Yemeni army’s successful expulsion of Al-Qaeda from strongholds in the south.
Meanwhile, in the southern city of Aden, a massive fire on Monday destroyed a carpet retail center in Crater district, claiming three lives and leaving one person missing.
Residents said that a fire ripped through the carpet business in the morning, destroying much of the building. The cause of the fire is unknown.
