SANAA, Yemen (AP) — A U.S. military service member was killed
Sunday during a raid against al-Qaida militants in central Yemen that also left
nearly 30 others dead, including women and children. The loss of the service
member is the first known combat death of a member of the U.S. military under
President Donald Trump.The
U.S. has been striking al-Qaida in Yemen from the air for more than 15 years,
mostly using drones, but has rarely put boots on the ground, and Sunday's
surprise pre-dawn raid could signal a new escalation against extremist groups
in the Arab world's poorest but strategically located country.
An
al-Qaida official and an online news service linked to the terror group said
the raid left about 30 people dead. Among the children killed was Nora, the
8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Yemeni-American cleric killed
in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen in 2011, according to the girl's grandfather. Nasser
al-Awlaki told The Associated Press that Nora was visiting her mother when the
raid took place. She was shot in the neck and bled for two hours before she
died, he said.
U.S.
Central Command said in a statement that three service members were wounded in
the raid and that a fourth one was injured in a "hard landing" in a
nearby location. The aircraft was unable to fly afterward and was
"intentionally destroyed, it added. It
said 14 militants from al-Qaida's branch in Yemen, formally known as
"al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula," were killed in the assault and
that U.S. service members taking part in the raid captured "information
that will likely provide insight into the planning of future terror
plots."
A
U.S. defense official said the raid was approved by Trump. President Barack
Obama had been briefed on it before he left office on Jan. 20, but for
operational reasons it was not ready to be executed before he departed,
according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss details beyond
those announced by the Pentagon and so spoke on condition of anonymity.
Yemeni
security and tribal officials said the raid in Yemen's central Bayda province
killed three senior al-Qaida leaders: Abdul-Raouf al-Dhahab, Sultan al-Dhahab,
and Seif al-Nims. The
al-Dhahab family, who are the late al-Awlaki's in-laws, is considered an ally
of al-Qaida, which is now chiefly concentrated in Bayda. A third family member,
Tarek al-Dhahab, was killed in a U.S. drone strike several years ago. It was
not immediately clear whether the family members were actual members of
al-Qaida.
The
news serviced linked to al-Qaida in Yemen likened the raid to a "massacre
against Muslims" and said U.S. warplanes were first seen in the sky above
the area at 9 p.m. Saturday and that the raid began at 2 a.m. on Sunday, with
16 missiles hitting three houses near Yakla village in Radaa district. A
two-hour gunbattle ensued after American service members landed on the ground,
it said. About 30 men, women and children were killed in the raid, it added.
The
killed and wounded included some Saudis present at the site, according to the
Yemeni officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to brief journalists. The
al-Qaida official sent to the AP in Cairo photos purportedly showing the
bloodied bodies of several children killed in the raid along with houses
showing bullet holes. The official requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Just
over a week ago, suspected U.S. drone strikes killed three other alleged
al-Qaida operatives in Bayda in what was the first-such killings reported in
the country since Trump assumed the U.S. presidency. The
tribal officials said the Americans captured and departed with at least two
unidentified individuals Sundsay, but the U.S. official in Washington said no
detainees were taken in the raid.
Al-Qaida
in the Arabian Peninsula, long seen by Washington as among the most dangerous
branches of the global terror network, has exploited the chaos of Yemen's civil
war, seizing territory in the south and east. The
war began in 2014, when Shiite Houthi rebels and their allies swept down from
the north and captured the capital, Sanaa. A Saudi-led military coalition has
been helping government forces battle the rebels for nearly two years.
Separately,
Yemen's president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi a day earlier called for the remnants
of his parliament, many of whom are in exile in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, to
convene in the country's southern port city of Aden, where he is struggling to
establish government control. Michael reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Jon
Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and AP National Security Writer Robert
Burns in Washington contributed to this report.
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