Yemen: US strikes south Yemen, Obama answers drone critics

US warplanes struck southern Yemen overnight killing at least 15 people, including a prominent al-Qaeda leader, tribal sources said.

The four night-time raids were "carried out by US planes," according to a local military official who spoke on condition of anonymity. They hit targets in the Loder and Al-Wadih areas of Abyan province, a tribal chief said.

Al-Qaeda militants control much of the province after taking advantage of months of political turmoil, which has forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh to agree to step down next month, to overrun swathes of the south.

Opponents of Saleh, however, accuse him of deliberately handing over towns and cities across the country to armed extremists in an attempt to gain Western support for his regime.

Three of the raids targeted a school in which Al-Qaeda fighters and chiefs of a local militant network were meeting around midnight, tribal sources said.

Around a dozen people were killed, among them regional Al-Qaeda leader Abdul Monem al-Fahtani, who has long been sought by the Yemeni authorities, and other local chiefs, they said.

The fourth strike reportedly hit an Al-Qaeda control post, killing three more people, they said.

"Two planes carried out these raids and continued to fly over the region through the night," a tribal chief told AFP.

The New York Times reported in June that the United States had stepped up its attacks on militant suspects in Yemen with armed drones and fighter jets.

US military conduct in Yemen still remains controversial, however, and is part of a broader US strategy to deploy its air force in its fight against Islamist militants.

The Obama administration has recently come under fire from Pakistan and Iraq for the use of its drones in the two countries.

President Obama acknowledged for the first time on Monday that US drones have struck Pakistan, but said the program had "tactical advantages."

"For the most part, they've been very precise precision strikes against Al-Qaeda and their affiliates, and we're very careful in terms of how it's been applied," Obama said.

The US president also sought to address Iraqi outrage at the deployment of drones in the country by stressing that their use was limited to surveillance.

"The truth is we're not engaging in a bunch of drone attacks inside Iraq. There's some surveillance to make sure that our embassy compound is protected," Obama said during an online question-and-answer session with users of YouTube and Google+.

The New York Times quoted a senior US official as saying talks were under way to obtain authorization for the current drone operations in Iraq.

However, the newspaper reported that three senior Iraqi officials – a top adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's national security adviser, and the acting minister of interior – said in interviews they had not been consulted.

Nuland declined to address whether the US government had obtained Iraqi permission to fly the drones, saying only that it always closely consulted with foreign governments about steps to protect US diplomats.

The Obama administration has steadily increased the use of US drones while withdrawing its land forces from Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US completed its withdrawal from Iraq in December, but the presence of drones has enraged Iraqi officials who consider it a violation of Iraq's sovereignty.

Similar sentiments are felt in Pakistan, with public anger rising at the repeated use of US drones to strike militant positions in the border regions with Afghanistan.

The New America Foundation think tank in Washington says drone strikes in Pakistan have killed between 1,715 and 2,680 people in the past eight years.

Human rights campaigners have expressed deep concern over increased use of drone strikes and the vulnerability of civilians to their attacks.

But US airstrikes were welcomed by Yemen's Saleh – a key American ally – in his struggle to crush opponents and retain power in the impoverished nation.

Saleh is in the United States for medical treatment after being seriously wounded in a bombing at the presidential palace in Sanaa in June.

In November, after 10 months of bloody protests, he signed a deal by which he transferred constitutional powers to his deputy, who is the sole candidate for next month's presidential polls.

Opposition groups and pro-democracy protesters fear that Saleh's regime will remain in power with US and Saudi backing, despite a change in the figurehead.

Mass protests continue in the country as a result.

(Al-Akhbar, AFP, Reuters)