Eight people, including five suspected al Qaeda members, were killed in an air strike and a shooting in Yemen on Friday, local officials and tribal sources said. An official in Shabwa province in eastern Yemen said two drone attacks, apparently carried out by US forces, targeted al Qaeda suspects.
Five members of the Islamist group were killed when a missile slammed into their car in the town of Azzan, 150 kilometres (90 miles) east of Ataq, the capital of Shabwa, he said. Witnesses said the car burst into flames before other militants put out the fire and retrieved the bodies. An official at Azzan hospital said six people in a car travelling in the opposite direction of the targeted vehicle were wounded, one of whom later died. There were no immediate details on the other drone strike.
Elsewhere, two men, including an intelligence officer, were shot dead as they left a mosque in the southern port city of Aden, in an al Qaeda revenge attack, tribal sources said. A member of the Assal tribe from Abyan province to which the victims belonged said the attack took place in the central district of Darim. "Al Qaeda wants revenge against our tribe for having driven them out of the town of Mudia," he said.
A medic at the city's Sadek hospital where the bodies were taken said the two men had been shot dead. Al Qaeda is strong in Abyan province, north of Aden, and has controlled its capital of Zinjibar since May 2011. But the Assal tribe drove them out of Mudia.
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