(Previous Incident Codes: YEM135 USYEM154 )

Between six to eight militants were reported killed and others were injured in an alleged US drone strike on the Markha area of Shabwa governorate in the early morning of Wednesday, August 7th 2013.

A Yemeni military official claimed that the raid took place in Markha town, approximately 75 km north of Atag in the ​​Shabwa governorate, Yemen.

A local Twitter activist identified one of the men killed as Sarhan al-Dhamlaki (aka Sarhan Khishiman Al Dhamalgi), from the al-Naseen tribe and a suspected jihadist. Sarhan al-Dhamlaki was on a list of Yemen’s 25 most-wanted AQAP operatives wanted for planning operations in Sanaa and other Yemeni provinces. The Yemeni government offered 5m Yemeni rials ($23,000) for information leading to their capture, reported the Long War Journal. In May 2014 al Qaeda released a euology for Sarhan Abdullah Ali al Nasi (aka Khishiman), one of the group’s military commanders. Khishiman became involved in terrorism before 2007 when Yemeni authorities arrested him for trying to travel to fight in Iraq. He was jailed in Sanaa where he reportedly met Anwar al Awlaki. Khishiman was in prison for nine months before joining AQAP as a driver and later gained a senior position.

Anonymous Yemani officials told the New York Times that those killed and possibly injured were also members of the nearby Bedouin tribe.

Residents of the area told the Guardian that they saw two vehicles and several bodies on fire at the site of the strikes. A local news correspondent reported that an unmanned drone launched missiles at two vehicles on the main road. Many sources claimed that only members of AQAP died. Yemen’s Saba news agency claimed that the drone killed four Al Qaeda militants in the first car and that several others died when the second car was destroyed. Locals who ran towards the site said they were “rocked by a loud explosion” and that they found “charred body parts”. In the short-time following the alleged strike, “the drone continued to roam the airspace of the area after the implementation of the raid, while the flames continued to rise due to the fire of the two cars”.

Civilians from the Shabwa governorate showed resentment towards the timing of the drone strike as it occurred during the final days of Ramadan and the start of the Eid al Fitr holiday. Jamal Fatah said, “The U.S. drones and planes flying over our head and across the country is a flagrant breach of Yemen’s sovereignty – – I feel really sad and irritated by this,”

All of the sources that reported on the strike attributed the casualties to US drone strikes.