ADEN: A drone strike killed six suspected Al Qaeda militants in central Yemen on Sunday, a security official said.

The US military is the only force known to operate armed drones over Yemen.

The official said the strike happened after sundown and targeted a vehicle in Bayda province.

“An unmanned drone — likely American — bombed the group’s vehicle in the area of Qayfa, where Al Qaeda is active,” the official said.

Al Qaeda’s global network remains “remarkably resilient”, posing more of a threat in some regions than the militant Islamic State group, UN sanctions monitors said in a report last week.

The report sent to the Security Council said that the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) served as a communications hub for the UN-designated terror group as a whole.

A long-running American drone war against AQAP has intensified since US President Donald Trump took office in January last year.

The group has flourished in the chaos of Yemen’s civil war, which the UN has called the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2018