Geolocation
Airwars assessment
One usually-reliable Twitter source, @demolinari, indicated that a US drone strike had killed two “suspected” AQAP militants in Al-Sawma’ah district, Bayda governorate, on the afternoon of April 8th 2017. There were no known associated reports of civilian harm.
Several sources – for example Yemen Live News – reported that two alleged militants were killed around this time while travelling on a motorbike in the area. Local security sources told AFP that a strike, killing two in the same area, took place in the evening on April 7th. Most sources, though posted on April 8th, did not specify a date. Given this date discrepancy, these sources are accounted for in event USYEMTr071.
This event has been created to account for the possibility that a second strike event occurred on the afternoon of April 8th, though it is also possible that @demolinari’s report constituted late reporting of the earlier strike.
The incident occured in the afternoon.
Geolocation notes (1) [ collapse]
Reports of the incident mention a vehicle being struck within the Al Sawma’ah district (مديرية الصومعة), for which due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further. The generic coordinates for Al Sawma’ah district are: 14.207644, 45.815614.