The Washington Post says the CIA believes Yemen’s branch of al-Qaeda has surpassed its parent organization, Osama bin Laden’s core group in Pakistan, as a threat to the US and recommends escalating US operations against the group.
The newspaper reports that the CIA wants to augment clandestine US military operations in Yemen, with covert armed drone strikes.
“We are looking to draw on all of the capabilities at our disposal,” the newspaper quoted an unnamed senior official in the US President Barack Obama’s administration.
US special operations forces have been working with the Yemeni government for years to hunt Yemen’s al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, which counts US-born rebel cleric Anwar al-Awlaki among its leadership.
A US counterterrorism official says both al-Qaeda and its offshoots are dangerous, but the Yemeni branch has not faced the same pressure as the parent group in Pakistan.
The official spoke anonymously to discuss security matters.
The US military had conducted a secret air strike in May against a suspected group of al-Qaeda militants in the remote desert of Marib Province, the New York Times reported earlier this month, citing unnamed US officials.
It was at least the fourth such assault, it said, though these were never publicly acknowledged by the US administration or Yemeni authorities.
Meanwhile, Yemeni authorities claim they are regaining control of the southern town of Loder, a great part of which was in the grip of suspected al-Qaeda militants during days of clashes with the army.
“Security authorities have done their job efficiently and professionally,” Yemeni Deputy Interior Minister General Saleh al-Zaweri said late on Tuesday in a statement carried by the Saba state news agency.
He said that security forces have “stormed the dens of the terrorists” in Loder, in Abyan Province, and were “chasing the runaway elements.”
“Security forces have taught the terrorists of al-Qaeda a hard lesson and inflicted painful hits on them, forcing those terrorist elements that tried to hide to flee after dozens were killed and wounded,” he added.
Zaweri said that more than 12 suspected al-Qaeda militants were killed in the fighting which started on Friday.
An AFP tally based on official and medical sources had put the total death toll on Tuesday at some 33 people, including 19 militants, 11 soldiers, and three civilians.
Other security officials in Abyan also said that al-Qaeda’s fatalities were 12, and that all were Yemenis, Saba said.
Authorities had said that Adel Saleh Hardaba, 27, whom they described as the al-Qaeda second-in-command in Loder, was among the dead.
The army had at the start of the fighting distributed pamphlets urging civilians in Loder, which has a population of 80,000, to leave.
Security officials said at the weekend that civilians had mostly fled the city and that “only gunmen are left.” Many of the militants were believed to be foreigners, notably Saudis and Pakistanis.
South Yemen, and Abyan Province in particular, is feared to have become a base for al-Qaeda militants to regroup under the network’s local franchise, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Largely tribal Yemen is the ancestral homeland of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
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