One of the Slain May Be 'Al-Qaeda Suspect' Officials Say

The Obama Administration’s drone war against Yemen continues tonight, with a drone attacking and destroying a car in the Maarib Province, killing four people within and wounding several bystanders, seven of them severely so.

None of the slain were identified, though the Yemeni Interior Ministry claimed that one of them might have been “an al-Qaeda suspect,” which was the reason for the attack.

The admission that only one of the victims might be a suspect is in and of itself a major shift for Yemen, which normally dubs all targets of US attacks “suspected militants” whether there is any evidence or not.

Drone strikes are fueling growing resentment across Yemen, particularly the tribal dominated central and eastern provinces, where the belief is that the government simply doesn’t care who the US kills, so long as it can maintain the appearance of cooperation with the Obama Administration.