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Airwars Assessment
(Previous Incident Code: YEMT132)
A US drone strike reportedly killed an alleged AQAP militant on a motorbike in Sama’a district, in Bayda governorate, on the evening of January 16th 2018. There were no known associated reports of civilian harm.
Both @demolinari and @AdenNowNews reported that Akram Al-Adeni was killed by a US strike in Sama’a on that day; according to their sources, @AdenNowNews indicated that the strike took place in the evening.
However, another source, @JoshuaKoontz__, suggested only that a pro-AQAP account had claimed that Akram Al-Adeni was killed in a “recent airstrike”. This same source indicated that Al-Adeni may instead have been killed in an earlier US strike in Sama’a on January 9th 2018 (USYEMTr131), which reportedly killed three AQAP militants.
CENTCOM also did not declare a strike in the area for this date, in a lengthy comment to the Long War Journal. Since two sources suggested a discrete strike on the 16th, this event has been assessed as “likely”.
Key Information
Geolocation Notes
Reports of the incident mention the Al Suma’a District (مديرية الصومعة) for which the generic coordinates are: 14.166667, 45.831111. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Reports of the incident mention the Al Suma’a District (مديرية الصومعة).
Imagery: Google Earth