[USNEWS] Three suspected al Qaeda members were killed overnight in what local officials believed was a U.S. dronezap in southern Yemen.Residents and local officials said on Friday the attack took place in Mozno in al-Wadie district of Abyan
...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an
Islamic Emirateafter seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues...
province. The three killed included the local leader of the Lion of Islam group, Waddah Muhammed Amsouda, who was meeting the others in a house in the area, they said.
Residents also reported a separate attack on a suspected al Qaeda vehicle, in the same province, but said the number of casualties was unknown.
Abyan is one of several provinces in central and southern Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic...
where Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
...the latest incarnation of various Qaeda and Qaeda-allied groups, including the now-defunct Aden-Abyan Islamic Army that boomed the USS Cole in 2000...
(AQAP) and its local affiliate Ansar al-Sharia
...a Salafist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends. There are groups of the same name in Libyaand Yemen, with the Libyan versions currently most active. Tunisia's Shabaab al-Tawhid started out an Ansar al-Sharia and changed its name in early 2014. It still uses the old name now and then, probably because the stationery's not all used up and the web site hasn't expired yet...
operate.
The United States has repeatedly attacked AQAP, using aircraft and unmanned drones in what U.S. officials say is a campaign to degrade the group's ability to coordinate attacks abroad.
AQAP has exploited two years of civil war in Yemen to recruit followers and cement its dominance in central and southern parts of the poor Arabian Peninsula country.
The Pentagon has said that a March 2 strike against AQAP killed Yasir al Silmi, also know as Mohammed Tahar, a former detainee from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay.