(Previous Incident Code: YEM285)

A US airstrike killed two ISIS militants “in a parked truck” in Bayda governorate on October 25th 2017, a US Central Command spokesperson told CNN News, one of two strikes against the group in the area that day.

This confirmed local reports that a US drone strike had targeted ISIS militants in Baqarat, in the Qayfa area of Bayda, on the evening of October 25th, though sources suggested that as many as seven had died in the strike. There were no known associated reports of civilian harm.

Sources, including @demolinari, suggested that one of the two strikes targeted the vicinity of Ayshamah, between the Yakla and Dhi Kalb areas, while another targeted the Baqarat area, which lies to the west of Ayshamah. Since CENTCOM told CNN that this strike took place “about five miles to the west” of another strike (USYEMTr108), reports regarding the Baqarat area have been associated by Airwars with this event. It remains possible that any one of these reports instead referred to USYEMTr108.

While CENTCOM briefed that two were killed in the strike, reports from Salmashad and Addiyar indicated that, according to local sources, seven alleged ISIS militants were killed by a strike in the Baqarat area.

Reports of the overall death toll from the two strikes varied. Multiple sources, including AFP, suggested that a total of 13 militants were killed in the two strikes, though US Central Command told CNN that nine had died. At the lower end, VOA reported that “at least seven” had been killed, while one Twitter source suggested that six had died in the course of both strikes.

Though most indicated that the targets were ISIS-affiliated, some asserted that AQAP militants had been killed.  According to Al-Hudud and some local-language Twitter users, one strike killed three AQAP leaders and four “others” in a car, though it was unclear which specific strike this referred to.

The strikes came less than ten days after US forces targeted ISIS militants in Yemen for the first time, in strikes (USYEMTr105 and USYEMTr106) on two training camps that cumulatively killed over 50 fighters, according to the US.