Geolocation
Airwars assessment
Two local-language Twitter sources reported that US drone strikes targeted “terrorist groups” in “Al-Ahmar camps” in the Azan and Al Houta area, Shabwa governorate. No other known sources alleged US strikes, and no information was available on casualties. There were no known reports of civilian harm.
Since the first known report of this event, from @SouthernHariri, came at 11:43 PM local time on September 24th, Airwars has assessed the alleged strike as having taken place late on that day.
@SouthernHariri and @S6s6h both reported US drone strikes in the area. Though the wording of the latter source differed from the former, similarities indicate that the tweet from @S6s6h may have been derivative of @SouthernHariri. As such, this event has been assessed as a “single-source” allegation.
US Central Command told Airwars that no US military strikes were conducted in Yemen during September 2019. It is, however, possible that an undeclared strike was conducted by the CIA, or was a clandestine US military action.
The incident occured during the night.
Summary
Sources (4) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (2) [ collapse]
Geolocation notes (1) [ collapse]
Reports of the incident mention the Al Ahmar (الأحمر ) camps, allegedly located within Jabal Sakah (جبل سقاه), in the vicinity of Al Houta (الحوطة) town, north west of Azzan (عزان). Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further. The generic coordinates for Jabal Sakah are: 14.396188, 47.387619.
US Forces Assessment:
Original strike reports
CENTCOM told Airwars that there were no US military strikes during the month of September in Yemen. The last declared CENTCOM action was on June 24th 2019 in Al Bayda province.