U.S. service member killed, 3 wounded in Yemen raid targeting Al Qaeda leaders

The U.S. military said Sunday that one service member was killed and three others wounded in a raid in Yemen targeting the local Al Qaeda branch, marking the first-known combat death of a U.S. soldier under President Trump’s administration.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement that a fourth service member was injured in a “hard landing” in a nearby location. The aircraft — presumably a helicopter — was unable to fly afterward and was “intentionally destroyed.”

The Central Command statement said 14 militants from the Al Qaeda branch known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were killed in the assault and that U.S. service members taking part in the raid captured “information that will likely provide insight into the planning of future terror plots.”

Yemeni security and tribal officials said the assault in Yemen’s central Bayda province killed three senior Al Qaeda leaders.

The surprise dawn attack in Bayda province killed Abdul-Raouf Dhahab, Sultan Dhahab and Seif Nims, the officials said.

The Dhahab family is considered an ally of Al Qaeda, which is now chiefly concentrated in Bayda province. A third family member, Tarek Dhahab, was killed in a previous U.S. drone strike several years ago. It was not immediately clear whether the family members were members of Al Qaeda.

The U.S. troops killed or wounded some two dozen men, including some Saudis present at the site, according to the Yemeni officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief journalists.

An official with Al Qaeda confirmed the killings, describing the attack as a “massacre” and saying that women and children had been killed as well, although he provided no evidence. He said Apache attack helicopters struck the area before dropping commandos in for the raid, which took place near Yakla village in Radaa district. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Just over a week ago, suspected U.S. drone strikes killed three other alleged Al Qaeda operatives in Bayda province in what was the first-such killings reported in the country since Trump assumed the U.S. presidency.

The tribal officials said the Americans were looking for Al Qaeda leader Qassim Raimi, adding that they captured and departed with at least two unidentified individuals.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, long seen by Washington as among the most dangerous branches of the global terrorist network, has exploited the chaos of Yemen’s civil war, seizing territory in the south and east.

The war began in 2014, when Shiite Houthi rebels and their allies swept down from the north and captured the capital, Sana. A Saudi-led military coalition has been helping government forces battle the rebels for nearly two years.

Separately, Yemen’s president, Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi, a day earlier called for the remnants of his parliament, many of whom are in exile in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, to convene in the country’s southern city of Aden, where he is struggling to establish government control.

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