SANA, Yemen — The United States has raised the tempo in its war against al-Qaeda in Yemen, killing nine of the terrorist group’s militants in the second high-profile airstrike in as many weeks.
The dead in the late Friday night strike included the 17-year-old son of Anwar al-Awlaki, the prominent American-Yemeni militant killed in a Sept. 30 strike.
Yemeni officials on Saturday attributed the recent U.S. successes against al-Qaeda to better intelligence from an army of Yemeni informers and cooperation with the Saudis, Washington’s longtime Arab allies.
The successes come even as Yemen falls deeper into turmoil, with President Ali Abdullah Saleh clinging to power in the face of months of massive protests. Saturday saw the worst bloodshed in weeks in the capital, Sana: At least 18 people were killed when Saleh’s troops fired on protesters and clashed with rivals.
Witnesses estimated up to 300,000 people joined Saturday’s demonstrations, the largest in the capital in several months.
“Everyone with interests in Yemen, including al-Qaeda and the Americans, is raising the stakes at this time of uncertainty” said analyst Abdul-Bari Taher. “The Americans are wasting no time to try and eliminate the al-Qaeda threat before the militants dig in deeper and cannot be easily dislodged.”
Tribal elders in the area where Friday’s strikes took place said the dead included Abdul-Rahman al-Awlaki, the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim preacher and savvy Internet operator who became a powerful al-Qaeda recruiting tool in the West and who was on a U.S. capture-or-kill list. The elder al-Awlaki and another propagandist, Pakistani-American Samir Khan, were killed in the Sept. 30 strike.
The killing of al-Awlaki’s son in the attack Friday night, if confirmed, would be the third time an American was killed by a U.S. drone attack in Yemen, although it was not clear whether the son was an intended target.
Also dead in the Friday airstrike in the southeastern province of Shabwa was Egyptian-born Ibrahim al-Banna, identified by the nation’s Defense Ministry as the media chief of the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the branch is known, is considered by the U.S. the most dangerous of the terrorism network’s affiliates after it plotted two recent failed attacks on American soil. Its fighters and other Islamic militants have taken advantage of Yemen’s chaos to seize control of several cities and towns in a southern province.
That has raised American fears they can establish a firmer foothold in the strategically located country close to the vast oil fields of the Persian Gulf and overlooking key shipping routes.
Yemeni officials familiar with the U.S. military drive against al-Qaeda in Yemen said a shift of strategy by the Americans was finally yielding results. Human assets on the ground were directly providing actionable intelligence to U.S. commanders rather than relying entirely on Yemen’s security agencies, which the Americans had long considered inefficient or even suspected of leaking word on planned operations.
They said there were as many as 3,000 informers on the U.S. payroll across the country.
The New York Times contributed to this report.
