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Airwars Assessment
(Previous Incident Code: YEM297)
Two civilians were allegedly killed by a US drone strike in Dhi Kalb, in the Qayfa area of Bayda governorate, on the afternoon of January 1st 2018, according to multiple sources.
In an email to the Long War Journal, a US Central Command spokesperson confirmed that a strike took place “against AQAP” in Bayda on that day. Since there were no known local reports of other US strikes on January 1st; this event is therefore treated as declared.
Sources, including Yemen Shabab, named those killed as relatives Mohammed Mansar Abu Sarima and Mohammed Naji Ahmad Abu Sarima. Most suggested that the former was a 70-year old and the latter a 40-year old, though one local language Twitter source (@m_alsallaly) gave ages of 50 and 25 respectively.
Two sources, @almasdaronline and @MrsdYem, suggested that those killed were “militants of the Popular Resistance”, indicating that they were among those who militarily opposed Houthi forces in the area.
The pair were reportedly targeted as they sat together in a farm in Dhi Kalb. Tribal sources told Yemen Shabab that they were killed while in a tribal meeting with “the people of Al-Wasat”, which had been called to consider a disputed plot of land in the Dhi Kalb area. A relative of those killed, Mohammed Abu Sarimah, similarly told Associated Press that they had just returned from “mediating a local dispute”.
Reprieve shared their findings on this strike with Airwars. Witnesses told an investigator that the two men, an elderly man and a man in his early thirties, were unaffiliated with AQAP. Both were reportedly the first to arrive at a tribal meeting on farmland approximately 300 metres from their house; as they arrived, at around 2:30 PM, they were killed by the drone strike.
According to the AP report, tribal mediations “involve large gatherings of tribesmen who are often armed, potentially raising drone operators’ suspicions”. Mohammed Abu Sarimah told AP that “We don’t have any affiliation. They are simple farmers who don’t know how to read or write… We live in fear. Drones don’t leave the sky.”.
In its annual civilian casualty report to Congress issued in April 2019, the US Department of Defense stated that it had assessed “no credible reports of civilian casualties resulting from US military actions in Yemen during 2018″.
Responding to Airwars’ publication of its Yemen dataset and accompanying report in October 2020, CENTCOM dismissed all but two civilian harm claims under President Trump, asserting that “USCENTCOM conducted a thorough review of the information AirWars provided regarding allegations of potential civilian harm caused by USCENTCOM strikes in Yemen from 2017-2020… The bulk of the information asserted by AirWars, however, did not correspond with dates and locations of U.S. military strikes or raids in Yemen. Other AirWars allegations either did not allege civilian harm or were not assessed as credible upon our review.”
Key Information
Geolocation Notes
Reports of the incident mention the village of Dhi Kalib (ذي كالب ) for which the generic coordinates are: 14.555183, 44.882332. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.