U.S. pounds al Qaeda in Yemen with more than 20 strikes

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-yemen-idUSKBN1691PV

The United States said it carried out more than 20 precision strikes in Yemen targeting al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula on Thursday, in the first major operations against the group since a January raid by U.S. commandos.

The Pentagon said the strikes, which were first reported by Reuters, targeted al Qaeda militants, heavy weapons systems, equipment, infrastructure and the group's fighting positions.

They were carried out in the Yemeni governorates of Abyan, Al Bayda and Shabwah.

"The strikes will degrade the AQAP's ability to coordinate external terror attacks and limit their ability to use territory seized from the legitimate government of Yemen as a safe space for terror plotting," Navy Captain Jeff Davis said, using an acronym for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The strikes come a month since a Jan. 29 raid against AQAP. The operation, the first of its kind authorized by new President Donald Trump, was hailed as a success by the White House and other U.S. officials. Still, critics questioned the value and effectiveness of an mission which killed women and children, as well as several militants and a Navy SEAL.

Trump, citing information from his defense secretary, told Congress on Tuesday that the raid yielded valuable intelligence that would "lead to many more victories in the future."

AT LEAST NINE DEAD

The U.S. military did not estimate the number of militants killed in the strikes, but residents and local officials in southern Yemen said that at least nine suspected al Qaeda militants died in two separate incidents.

They said four men believed to belong to al Qaeda died in a strike on a building in al-Saeed, an area of Shabwa province home to the al-Awaleq, the extended clan of Anwar al-Awlaki, a militant and U.S. citizen killed in by U.S. drone in 2011.

Another five suspected al Qaeda fighters died when a missile fired by a drone struck a vehicle carrying weapons while traveling on a road between al-Wadie district and the area of Moujan, in Abyan province, some 40 km (25 miles) away, according to a local official.

In a separate incident, residents and local officials in the Gulf of Aden town of Shuqra in southern Yemen also reported air strikes in an adjacent mountain area where hundreds of al Qaeda militants are believed to be based.

They said they heard loud explosions early on Thursday morning in al-Maraqisha, a rugged mountainous area where al Qaeda militants took refuge last year after they were driven out of Yemeni cities they had captured earlier.

There were no immediate details available on damages or casualties caused by those strikes.

INTELLIGENCE ON AQAP

AQAP boasts one of the world's most feared bomb makers, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, and it has been a persistent concern to the U.S. government ever since a 2009 attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.

The militant group has taken also advantage of a civil war pitting the Iran-aligned Houthis against the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to try to widen its control and influence in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country, one of the poorest in the Middle East.

The conflict, which U.N. officials say has killed more than 10,000 people, has also forced the United States to scale back its presence in Yemen, degrading U.S. intelligence about the group, officials say.
 
https://www.theguardian.com/global-...emen-food-crisis-we-are-broken-bombing-hunger

Yemen's food crisis: 'We die either from the bombing or the hunger'

Broom-maker Taie al-Nahari is kneeling on the sand, shirtless, outside his thatched hut in al-Qaza village in Yemen’s al-Hudaydah governorate. His bones show through his skin.

Before the conflict began in 2015, the 53-year-old was a fisherman. Now he makes two brooms a day, which earns him a daily income of $1. “The boats that we were working on were bombed [by Saudi jets]. Now my family and I don’t have enough to eat,” he says.

The conflict is the primary driver of a hunger crisis that the UN has warned could turn to famine this year if nothing is done.

On Wednesday, the UN launched a $2.1bn (£1.6bn) appeal to prevent famine in the Arab world’s poorest nation, where nearly 3.3 million people – including 2.1 million children – are acutely malnourished. The humanitarian appeal is the largest launched for Yemen and aims to provide life-saving assistance to 12 million people this year.

Jamie McGoldrick, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, said: “The situation in Yemen is catastrophic and rapidly deteriorating”. At least 10,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict.

Al-Nahari lives in the area of Yemen worst hit by the crisis. He says even those fishermen whose boats have remained intact do not dare to sail for fear of being bombed by the Saudi jets that frequently bomb targets within the country. The attacks are to counter the advances of the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who control the capital, Sana’a, and have spread out across Yemen. “The war killed our only income, which was [me] working as a fisherman, and now we are jobless and hopeless,” he says.

Al-Nahari did not earn much as a fisherman, but it was enough to buy flour and some basic food. “We are broken, we don’t have enough money, no food, nothing to eat, nothing to work with,” he says.

Fatima takes care of her two grandsons in al-Hudaydah’s al-Mujelis village. Ali is 11 and Mohammed four. They both suffer from thalassemia and their condition has been exacerbated by the lack of rich food. “We have no money to treat my grandsons or to feed ourselves. Since we lost our jobs, we have no income and we have nothing to eat,” she says.

The children’s family used to worked in a Mango farm before the bombings. “These days, we sell brooms and buy ourselves some flour and then eat it with water,” she says. “Either we die from the bombing or from the hunger. My grandson needs treatment and also on the top of all that he needs to eat a healthy food, my grandson doesn’t know what the milk tastes like.”

She says the world was turning a blind eye to the Saudi bombings, which have prompted criticism of the UK, which exports weapons to Saudi Arabia. “I also blame the whole world for watching us dying and for their silence against [the] Saudi-led coalition,” she says.

Ashwaq Ahmad Moharram, an obstetrician and gynaecologist volunteering in al-Hudaydah, says the humanitarian situation there is believed to be the worst among Yemen’s 22 governorates.

“The situation in al-Hudaydah was bad before and now it has become even worse; if they were poor before, now they are poorer,” she says.
 

Did they take out any bad dudes or just civilians?

Together again.

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Your boy Obama ceaselessly carried out these attacks during his presidency, yet you never posted these stories 2009-2016. Here's just one:


Obama’s covert drone war in numbers: ten times more strikes than Bush




There were ten times more air strikes in the covert war on terror during President Barack Obama’s presidency than under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Obama embraced the US drone programme, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in those countries, according to reports logged by the Bureau.

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.c...r-in-numbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush
 
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