Geolocation
Airwars assessment
Six to seven militants were killed in an alleged US drone strike which destroyed one vehicle as it travelled as part of a three vehicle convoy along a desert road from Shabwa to Marib on the 12th of May, 2012.
Al-Masdar Online reported that local residents had claimed that “the airstrike took place in the Al-Maqsara area in the Hareeb district, south of Ma’rib, killing at least seven, the car was set ablaze and some of the dead bodies were charred.” Al-Masdar Online further stated that those killed in the strike included “four belonging to the Aqeel family in the Hareeb area, two from Al- Damasceneh and the Gharib family in Wadi Ubaidah, the last was an Egyptian, a leader of al-Qaeda.”
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that the specific names of those killed in the strike were subsequently released by the Yemen Ministry of Information and were listed as “Ali Hassan Ali Gharib al Shabwani from the Shabwan family; Hassan Saud Hassan Bin Mouaily, from the Obayda clan; Hamid Nasir Al-Aqraa, from the Jadaan clan; Mohsen Saeed Kharassan, from the Jadaan clan; Ahmed Saleh Mohammed Al-Faqeer, from the Murad clan; Abdullah Ali Muhammad Miqan aka Al-Quti, from the Obeida clan; and Mohammed Saleh Bakeer Al-Faqeer, from the Murad clan (all from Marib province).”
Local sources reported that this incident was the first of two strikes that occured on the same day, possibly targeting the same convoy of vehicles (USYEM076-B). On the 13th of May, CNN reported that, according to local officials, the drone strike had “hit one of three vehicles carrying the suspected militants in the district of Huraib, the other two vehicles fled the area unharmed and continued toward the southern Abyan province.” Al-Masdar Online reported that ‘local sources’ had said that a second airstrike later “apparently [hit] the other two cars in the Al-Hosoun area in Marib, killing three others.” According to Mareb Press, the vehicles in the convoy were “two Vitara and Shas”, with the initial strike hitting the “Vitara” car. Overall, sources reported that up to 13 militants were killed between the two incidents (USYEM076-B and USYEM077-B).
The incident occured in the evening.
Summary
Sources (21) [ collapse]
Geolocation notes (1) [ collapse]
Reports of the incident mention that two cars were struck on a desert road in the Harib district (حريب) of Ma’rib (مَأْرِب) province. Due to limited information and satellite imagery available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the precise location of the strike. The generic coordinates for the district Harib (حريب) are: 14.901509, 45.379398.