Overnight air raids struck an Al-Qaeda meeting and control post in southern Yemen, killing around 15 people including a long-hunted regional militant leader, tribal chiefs said on Tuesday, Jan 31.
The four night-time raids were "carried out by U.S. planes," according to a local military official who spoke on condition of anonymity. They hit targets in the Loder and Al-Wadih areas of Abyan province, a tribal chief said.
Al-Qaeda militants control much of the province after taking advantage of months of political turmoil, which has forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh to agree to step down next month, to overrun swathes of the south.
"We think they were carried out by American planes," a tribal chief said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Three of the raids targeted a school in which Al-Qaeda fighters and chiefs of a local militant network were meeting around midnight, the sources said.
Around a dozen people were killed, among them regional Al-Qaeda leader Abdul Monem al-Fahtani, who has long been sought by the Yemeni authorities, and other local chiefs, they said. The fourth strike hit an Al-Qaeda control post, killing three more people, they said, AFP reported.
The deteriorating security situation in Yemen, caught up in an Arab pro-democracy uprising unleashed a year ago, has raised alarm including at the UN Security Council of a growing presence of Al-Qaeda militants in lawless areas in the south and east of the country.
