(Previous Incident Code: YEM174 )

Three US drone strikes left at least nine and as many as 20 people dead, including two named alleged senior AQAP fighters. The strikes hit several vehicles near Radaa, the main town in the central province of al Bayda. There was some discrepency around the combatant status of those killed, however sources which alleged tribesmen died also mentioned they carried weapons. In this case, all killed are constituted as combatants in our data.

The strike reportedly killed Nabil al Dahab and Shawki al Badani, allegedly a senior figure in AQAP. The Yemeni government had put out a reward for $100,000 for details of his whereabouts and he was included on a US list of specially designated terrorist. He was wanted by the US as he “reportedly assigned an AQAP operative to target the US embassy in Sanaa”. He had also “been described as being connected” to a savage suicide bombing that killed more than 100 people in May 2012.

Al Badani was added to the list in June 2014, nearly six months after the US said he was the intended target of a botched drone strike on December 12 2013 that erroneously attacked a wedding party.

Al Dahab was reportedly AQAP’s leader in al Bayda province. The US had tried to kill him in May 2012 with his brother Qaed Ahmad Nasser al Dahab but both escaped. They were Anwar al Awlaki’s brothers in law after their sister married the US born preacher.

Nabil al Dahab and his family had allied itself with al Qaeda and the US had made several attempts to kill various members of the family in 2012 and 2013. In August 2013 they did kill Qaed, allegedly then the AQAP commander in al Bayda as well as the group’s “spiritual leader” and a military commander “who had previously fought with the group in Iraq”.

Both were “known for the training and indoctrination of suicide bombers” according to an unnamed intelligence officer.

The land around Radaa was the scene of bloody sectarian fighting between Shiite armed groups and al Qaeda and Sunni militias. It was therefore a challenging area to report from and the details of these three air strikes are not clear. It has not been possible to disaggregate the death tolls of the three so they are recorded here as a single incident.

Some media sources did not report three attacks. One carried details on just one strike. However, where it has been possible to make a comparison, the descriptions of the strikes overlap. The first attack appears to have targeted a truck carrying around alleged al Qaeda fighters. The second and third strikes reportedly targeted two convoys of vehicles.

The dead were mostly reported as AQAP fighters. However one source said the dead were tribal fighters and AQAP fighters – implying some of the dead were from the Sunni tribes fighting with al Qaeda against the Shiite Houthi group in al Bayda province. The Houthis took control of Sanaa in September and Yemen’s security situation deteriorated yet further this month as the group’s fighters have pushed in to new territory like al Bayda.

This was the third consecutive strike in the province since the Houthis reportedly moved into the area around Radaa on October 14. It is the scene of ongoing battles between the Houthis, a Shiite group, and AQAP and local Sunni militias. These sectarian clashes reportedly claimed the lives of as many as 22 Houthis in a series of attacks by Sunni fighters late the previous day.