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Airwars Assessment
(Previous Incident Code: YEMT033)
According to a report by The Intercept, US helicopter gunships fired on the village of Al Ghayil, in the Yakla area of Al Bayda governorate, on the night of March 3rd 2017, damaging “at least six houses”. There were no known associated reports of civilian harm.
Late on March 3rd, one local language social media source, @toaiman1992, tweeted that “intensive” US raids had targeted the “homes of Yakla residents”. There were no other known local reports of this strike.
According to Iona Craig of The Intercept, repeated strikes against Al Ghayil at the start of March 2017 caused residents of the village, including Sheikh Aziz al Ameri and his family, to flee the area. As of the publication of The Intercept’s report on March 9th 2017, the family were said to be living under trees several miles from the village.
Al Ghayil was previously the target of a US (and allegedly, Emirati) ground raid on January 29th 2017 which had resulted in the deaths of at least 20 civilians, including eleven children. Reportedly amongst the dead were several relatives of Abdul Ilah al-Dhahab, including his son Nasser; his niece Nawar al-Awlaki; and two of his brothers, alleged AQAP militants Sultan and Abd-al-Ra’uf al-Dhahab. Multiple sources, however, disputed that the latter two were affiliated with AQAP, instead suggesting that they were instead involved with pro-Hadi militia forces.
This reported action took place amid a dramatic intensification of US operations against AQAP. On March 3rd, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davies announced that more than thirty strikes had been conducted since March 2nd in Yemen. On the same day, Associated Press reported that Yemeni officials and residents said that the US had conducted “dozens of airstrikes on al-Qaida targets in Yemen overnight and in the past 48 hours in one of the lengthiest, sustained operations inside this conflict-torn Arab country”.
A US military intelligence source told NBC News that the strikes beginning March 2nd were “part of ‘new directives’ to aggressively pursue the Dhahab and Qayfa clans”.
Key Information
Geolocation Notes
Reports of the incident mention a residential building being struck in the village of Al Ghayil (الغيل), for which the coordinates are: 14.592945, 45.038975. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.