(Previous Incident Code: YEM158 )

Three were killed in the first strike in Yemen in 20 days and four other were reported wounded.The attack reportedly hit an alleged al Qaeda camp, meeting or vehicle at around 1pm local time. The dead were reportedly taken to the town of Shabwa by car. US drones reportedly carried out the attack. The day before Yemen Air Force war planes reportedly targeted an al Qaeda position in Abyan – there were no reported casualties.

The attack came the same day as Saudi al Qaeda suspects, Mohamed Samel al Outebi, 30, and Mohamed al Aser, 31, were reportedly arrested in the west of the country. And two alleged al Qaeda members and two Yemeni soldiers were reportedly killed in the north of Yemen.

The US military has reportedly been barred from launching drone strikes in Yemen since a botched attack on December 12 2013 left several civilians dead. However CIA has reportedly continued to carry out attacks.

Military strikes were halted after an attack hit a wedding procession at the end of 2013. The attack killed 12-17, of which 8-16 were reportedly civilians. The dead were ` from the local al Ameri and al Taysi families. The bride was wounded by flying shrapnel.

Investigations by Reprieve, Human Rights Watch and Al Jazeera America uncovered details of the attack, including the names of the victims. The US reportedly launched two investigations into the wedding strike after these details emerged. Anonymous US officials said these investigations found ` those killed in the attack were militants. However they refused to reveal any details of the two inquiries.

Military operations in Yemen were carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a secretive Special Forces group. JSOC strikes were launched from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti – the US military’s largest outpost in Africa.

Camp Lemonnier is an old French Foreign Legion base. France still has a presence at the facility. And Nato uses the base for its counter-piracy operations off the east coast of Africa. The Djibouti government asked the US to stop operating drones from Camp Lemonnier in September 2013. The government was worried drones operating from the base were crashing too frequently and could come down on civilian areas. The drones were moved to an axillary field elsewhere in Djibouti.

The CIA launched strikes from a nominally secret airstrip in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert.

The existence of the base was first revealed by Iona Craig for The Times in July 2011. In February 2013 the New York Times also reported the base existed. It also emerged that the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press had agreed to administration requests not to publish information about the base.