SANAA: A drone strike killed three suspected Al Qaeda militants in Yemen on Monday after Washington vowed to carry on its campaign against the jihadist group despite the country’s ongoing political crisis.

The US embassy in Sanaa, meanwhile, announced on its website that it was closed to the public until further notice due to security concerns.

US President Barack Obama on Sunday insisted Washington would pursue its efforts against Al Qaeda in Yemen regardless of upheaval that has seen Western-backed President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi tender his resignation.

In the latest unrest on Monday, the Shia militiamen, known as Huthis, attacked protesters gathered at Sanaa University to demonstrate against their occupation of the capital.

Monday’s drone strike saw an unmanned aircraft, which only the United States operates in the region, fire four missiles at a vehicle in a desert area east of Sanaa, killing three suspected Al Qaeda militants, a tribal source said.

Yemeni authorities have for years allowed Washington to carry out strikes against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the local branch of the jihadist network which claimed responsibility for this month’s deadly attack on French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

In India on Sunday, Obama had vowed the United States would “continue to go after high-value targets inside of Yemen”.

“Washington will continue its campaign, regardless of who will be sitting on Yemen’s presidential chair, and regardless of whether the chair is empty or filled,” said Khaled Fattah, a Yemen expert at the Carnegie Middle East Centre.

Hadi resigned last week after the Huthis kidnapped his chief of staff and seized key buildings across the capital, including the presidential palace.

The unrest has raised fears of strategically important Yemen, which lies next to oil-rich Saudi Arabia and along key shipping routes, collapsing into a failed state.

The longer a power vacuum persists “the more dangerous the political limbo in Sanaa gets,” Fattah said.

Published in Dawn January 27th, 2015

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