(Previous Incident Code: YEM160 )

One civilian boy was killed and three others were injured, in a major event where US drones and the Yemeni military allegedly killed up to 55 AQAP militants.

A series of air strikes hit alleged AQAP training camps in Yemen’s southern Abyan province. The attacks follow a reported US drone strike the previous day in which at least three civilians were reportedly killed. The attacks were carried out by US drones and Yemen Air Force jets, US and Yemeni officials said.

The New York Times reported unnamed US officials saying the strikes were carried out by CIA drones. And Fares al Saqqaf, advisor to President Hadi, said ‘it wasn’t only drones but Yemeni fighter aircraft’ that launched the attack.

Initial reports suggested three to five alleged AQAP members killed. Yemen’s defence ministry website quoted an official source in the High Security Committee saying three suspected militants had been killed in an air strike in Abyan’s Mahfad district. The source said ‘leading and dangerous’ al Qaeda militants had been targeted.

But later reports put the casualties far higher, describing three linked attacks taking place after dawn. Local sources told Reuters 25 bodies were removed, while a tribal chief said more than 30 people had died. Xinhua added that helicopter gunships operated by the Yemeni military had later shelled the area.

There were reports that Saudi Arabian fighters who had been fighting in Syria were killed in this or the other strikes. An unnamed US official told Fox News that US Special Forces soldiers had been ‘sifting through the aftermath’ of the weekend’s drone strikes.

In late May 2014 AQAP published a eulogy of one of the group’s commanders: Ali bin Lakraa al Kazimi al Awlaki, the group’s leader in al Mahfed. He reportedly was injured in the strike and ultimately succumbed to his injuries.

Local media and militant sources reported a child was killed in the attack. Yemeni journalist Abdel Razzaq al Jamal tweeted: ‘Jarullah Ibn Sheikh Abdelmajid al Hattari was killed in the US strikes on Mahfed. He was 14 years old.’

هذه صورة جار الله ابن الشيخ عبد المجيد الهتاري. قتل قبل يومين بقصف أمريكي على مديرية المحفد اليمنية. عمره 14 عاما. pic.twitter.com/tAnU6C7Zh1

— عبد الرزاق الجمل (@aljamal2007) April 22, 2014

Al Hattari’s father, Sheikh Abdelmajid al Hattari, wrote a eulogy to his dead son. The father, an Imam in Sanaa according to his Facebook page, wrote:

He went, without asking my permission, to a session to memorise the Qoran, as he said. I overlooked him going without my permission because he was so young. I was happy that he had the desire to memorise the Qoran and support Muslim jihadi causes despite his young age. Now I have been told he was among the 50 martyrs killed by American planes in Abyan.

There were seven more people named by the Yemeni media:

Mohammad Salim Bin Ghazi al Malkab – a native of Mukalla in Hadramout province
Abu Fada Abdullah Bin Ali Khalaf al Bakri al Yafai
Khaled al Afifi
Ibrahim al Afifi
Sultan al Afifi
Omar al Hamikani
Abdullah Ali al Bakri

In October 2014 a Twitter account linked to AQAP published a eulogy for Mohammad Salem bin Ghazi (aka Mahmoud al Hadrami), an AQAP fighter. He was born in Saudi Arabia in 1973. He apparently wanted to fight in Afghanistan in the 1990s but had been unable to travel there. He had served four years in prison following which he moved to Yemen where he studied computer science, the eulogy says.

سيرة الأخ الشهيد كما نحسبه: محمد سالم بن غزي ـ تقبله الله صورة 1 pic.twitter.com/exSFu0GsJp

— نافح الطيب (@nafhateb) October 2, 2014

The Yemeni Ministry of Interior reported an hours-long series of air strikes against suspected al Qaeda positions.

‘Security authorities in Abyan revealed the killing of three dangerous al Qaeda members during the air strikes that targeted al Qaeda gatherings in the areas of Lawdiya, al Khayala and al Ramtha as well as other regions [on April 20],’ a statement on Yemen’s interior ministry website said.

‘The security authorities stated that the air strikes, which lasted for several hours, killed around terrorists from al Qaeda, including three movement leaders.’ It named among the dead alleged militants Saleh Saeed Mehrak; Salem Abedrabbo al Mushaybi, from Lawdar in Abyan province, he lived in the area of al Mamdara in Aden; and Hussein al Mehrak, a local – from Mahfed in Abyan.

Al Qaeda confirmed one of its local leaders was killed in the attack. Ali bin Likra al Kazimy, a commander in the Mahfed area, reportedly died from wounds he suffered in this attack. Al Qaeda published a statement made by al Kazimy shortly before his death. He said: ‘Americanized Yemeni army, which wants to insult and humiliate the tribes in accordance with the guidelines of the Americans.’

A local government official said it was a US drone that carried out the strike. ‘The US drone targeted an al Qaida-held training centre in Abyan’s mountainous region of Mahfad, killing five militants and injuring three others,’ the official said. Local residents told Xinhua that a suspected US drone had fired three missiles at an alleged militant hideout, destroying an unspecified number of vehicles at the site.