Sanaa, May 25: A Yemeni air strike against an Al-Qaeda operative claimed the lives of a local official and four of his bodyguards and the target managed to flee after being wounded, a security source said Tuesday.
“The Al-Qaeda operative, Mohamed Said Bin Jardane, was wounded and then escaped,” the source said of the overnight strike on a farm in the eastern province of Marib.
But a local official, Jaber Ali al-Shabwani and four of his bodyguards “were killed in the strike,” the source said, adding that the vehicle they were in was at the farm that was bombed in the raid.
The official had been negotiating for a week for Jardane’s surrender. He had gone to the farm, belonging to Jardane’s family, for talks.
Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and has been the scene of several attacks claimed by the group on foreign missions, tourist sites and oil installations.
Marib is one of the Al-Qaeda strongholds.
The group has suffered setbacks amid US pressure on Sanaa to crack down but its presence threatens to turn Yemen into a base for training and plotting attacks, a top US counter-terrorism official said in September.
–Agencies