(Previous Incident Codes: YEM143 USYEM165 )

Between two and four AQAP members were killed and “others” were injured in an alleged US drone strike in the Madhhar area of ​​al Qatn in the Hadhramaut Governorate of Yemen in the evening time of the 9th of December 2013.

The Long War Journal reported two deaths whilst a local military source, on the condition of anonymity, told Xinhua that “up to four terrorists were in the charred vehicle, which burst into flames shortly after a huge explosion of their small pick-up truck…” A tweet from @alayeam mentioned that there were “deaths and injuries” without specifying how many people were killed or injured, and whether they were civilians or militants.

Allegedly several missiles were fired at a moving red “Vitara” car (some sources refer to the vehicle as being white). All passengers were proclaimed dead after the car caught on fire and crashed on the highway between Qatn and Sana’a. An unnamed Yemeni intelligence official told Reuters that “the vehicle and its occupants were completely burned” and that identification of the bodies was not possible. However, local residents told Xinhua that ‘senior members‘ of Al Qaeda were in the vehicle when it was hit.

Multiple sources, such as the Mareb Press and Business Standard, indicated that the passengers were members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Local sources added that their car may have been transporting explosives.

A local man from the al Qatn district told journalist Shuaib Almosawa that one of the killed men was Abdullah Bin Hamood al Saiari, an important Al Qaeda leader. Riyadh al Jahwari, the director of Qatn district, told Gulf News that, “local residents rushed to the car when they heard two explosions. The moment they approached the car, the drone fired the three missiles”. He also added that the local hospital received three bodies at 6am.

There were no reported civilian casualties nor injuries. However, local sources did indicate that the raid was not far from the al Tali’a school in the main line in Hadhramout valley.

All of the sources that reported on the incident attributed the strikes to a US drone.