Four 'al-Qaeda militants' killed in Yemen drone strike

A US drone strike killed four people in south-east Yemen, in what a provincial official said on Thursday was an attack on suspected al-Qaeda militants.

The attack late on Wednesday hit a car in a military camp in Mukalla, capital of the vast desert province of Hadhramaut, where al-Qaeda are in control in an alliance with local tribes.

The official, who did not want to be named, said a local al-Qaeda chief was among those killed.

A second al-Qaeda vehicle was targeted on Wednesday evening in a drone strike in the town of Ghayl Bawazir in the same province but there was no word of casualties, he said.

Washington has repeatedly targeted militants from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in drone strikes in Yemen. Dozens of civilians have also died in the drone attacks.

AQAP said earlier this month that its leader Nasir al-Wuhayshi, number two in the global militant organisation, was killed in one such raid, and named its military chief as his successor.

The militant group have exploited the civil war in Yemen to consolidate their grip on Hadhramaut and its capital Mukalla - a city of more than 200,000.

Meanwhile, in the battleground southern city of Aden, four civilians were killed and scores wounded on Thursday by mortar fire blamed on the Houthis, according to a medical source.