(Previous Incident Codes: YEM116USYEM132)

On January 3rd 2013, at least three Al Qaeda militants were allegedly killed by a US or Yemeni airstrike in a “mountainous area” near Rada’a. There are currently no known reports of civilian harm.

Among those who died was Muqbel Abbad Al Zobah, nicknamed Abu Shebab, the news source Akhbar Alyom reported. This was corroborated amongst others by Al Jazeera English, AFP, and Xinhua. He was said to have been a 35 years old man from a nearby village in the Qifah area. Local sources described Al Zobah as a leading Al Qaeda figure and according to AFP, he was the brother-in-law of Tareq al Dhahab “who led Al Qaeda fighters in a brief January 2012 raid on Rada’a” and was killed in February 2012. The second militant was Musaed al Zubairi, a 37 years old man from the Ma’rib governorate. He has been wanted by the Yemeni security services. While most sources reported that the third militant killed in the strike could not be identified, Twitter user @BaFana3 claimed on the day of the attack that Sahr Qaid Al Dhahab was among the dead.

The militants were hit travelling in their car in the Qifah district of Rada’a and were killed on the spot, Akhbar Alyom reported. A resident told Reuters that “the car […] was completely destroyed and their bodies were unrecognisable.”

The attack was the fifth strike to hit southern Yemen within ten days, The Times reported. The strikes were believed to have targeted Abdulraouf al Dahab, who was “instrumental in Al Qaeda’s takeover of Rada’a last year.”

The following day, Reuters reported that local tribesmen demonstrated in Rada’a against US drone strikes. One protester told the news agency that “seven innocent civilians” had been killed in the recently intensified air campaign. Another said: “If the [Yemeni] authorities don’t stop the American attacks then we will occupy the government institutions in the town.”

According to Reuters, a government official said that “the attack was by a Yemeni aircraft.” However, most local accounts of the incident made the US responsible for the raid. Residents suspected that the strike came from an unmanned aircraft. “We have noticed a drone flying over for the past few days,” they told Reuters.