On Thursday, the Pentagon said it had carried out more than 20 strikes in Shabwa, Abyan and Baida provinces.
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USA air strikes have hit suspected al-Qaeda targets in Yemen for a second consecutive day, according to Yemeni security sources and local residents.
They said there were a number of casualties, including children.
United States special forces reportedly launched a secret ground mission against a senior al-Qaeda leader in Yemen (AQAP) last night – a claim the Pentagon has denied.
The order was given at the same time as a January 29 raid in Yemen was approved, which led to the death of Navy SEAL Ryan Owens, the Washington Examiner reported.
“Given the public’s concerns about the raid’s costs and other media reports about the raid, the administration has an obligation to disclose support for this claim”, said Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and one of half a dozen members of the Intelligence Committee interviewed for this article.
The residents and Yemeni officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to journalists.
The Jan. 29 raid, the first of its kind authorized by new President Donald Trump, was hailed as a success by the White House and other USA officials.
“So that helps us understand who’s within the network and who’s tied to who and who’s connected to who, which then allows us to draw that mosaic of what the group is and how it’s situated”, the official said.
Strikes over the past two days have not been based on intelligence from the January raid, the Pentagon says.
President Trump granted USA commanders the authority to order attacks in countries with little American military presence shortly after taking office, the Washington Examiner reported Friday. Current details of the raid reveal that after the raiding team forces the al-Qaida militants off the main building, the fighters withdrew to an adjacent structure and started firing their weapons indiscriminately.
The bombings took place between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., shaking houses and causing panic among sleeping residents who fled in fear, while smoke billowed into the sky and flashes of light were seen from a distance because of the explosions.
The Pentagon denied United States involvement in any ground combat and it was unclear if one of the US’s gulf allies might have been engaged in gun battles.
The Jan. 29 raid yielded information that is “potentially actionable”, including “an very bad lot of telephone numbers” that will help the military understand the terrorist network in the region, according to the defense official.
Davis noted that al Qaida, even more than the Iraq and Syria based ISIS, had U.S. blood on its hands.
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Al-Masri’s killing was confirmed on Monday by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an affiliate of the Al-Qaeda linked jihadist group Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly called Jabhat al-Nusra (the Al-Nusra Front).
