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| Arabia |
| Air strikes in Yemen kill suspected al Qaeda militants |
| 2012-03-10 |
| Overnight air strikes that residents said were carried out by US warplanes killed 23 suspected Al-Qaeda militants in mountains south of the Yemeni capital, security sources said on Saturday. "Twenty-three Al-Qaeda fighters were killed in air raids launched late on Friday against their positions," one security source told AFP. A police source gave the same death toll from the air strikes in a mountainous area of Al-Bayda province. The sources said the raids hit three villages west of the provincial capital, also called Al-Bayda -- Al-Makhnaq, Al-Dooqi and Al-Mamdud. Residents said the raids were carried out by US aircraft, but those accounts could not be immediately verified. Yemen is the ancestral homeland of slain Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the jihadist network took advantage of a protracted anti-government uprising last year to seize large swathes of the south and east. Washington has long made the country a major focus of its "war on terror". Two of the raids, launched from around 9:00 pm (1800 GMT) and lasting around three hours in total, struck the homes of Ahmed and Ali al-Humaiqani, two residents of Wadi al-Makhnaq, witnesses said. "An Al-Qaeda training camp can be found in Wadi al-Makhnaq," one local resident told AFP. "Several armed men arrived in multiple vehicles, along with two trucks loaded with weapons and ammunition boxes, and attended Friday prayers in Wadi al-Makhnaq," said the resident, who declined to be identified. |
| Posted by:tipper |