Reuters/Aden/Sanaa
Eight Islamist militants were killed by a US drone strike yesterday in a remote part of Hadramout, a Yemeni official said, the third such strike in the eastern Yemeni province this week. Yemen’s defence ministry said on its website that eight Al Qaeda members were killed in an air strike on their vehicle in the isolated, desert district of Hawra. The local official, who declined to be named, said it was a drone strike. The men were heavily armed, carrying machine-guns and explosives, the ministry said. The local official said the men were thought to have been on the way to carry out an attack. It was not possible to verify the details independently given the remoteness of the region. Washington, which fears the spread of militants in Yemen, has stepped up attacks by unmanned aircraft this year. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is based in Yemen and has mounted operations in neighbouring Saudi Arabia as well as attempting to launch attacks against the US. At least six suspected Islamist militants have been killed in air strikes apparently carried out by drones since Tuesday. In a statement issued yesterday, a group of clerics and preachers from southern Yemen said one of their members had been killed in one of the recent US drone attacks. “Among the four killed in an attack launched by a US aircraft in the Al Qatn district of Hadramout on Wednesday was one of our members, Salem bin Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, who had no link to Al Qaeda,” the Union of Clerics and Preachers of Yemen’s Southern Provinces said in a statement. “He was known for his moderate ... approach that was far from being excessively strict.”