US drone attacks have killed at least 25 al-Qaeda-linked fighters including one of their leaders while a Yemeni air force raid killed 20 more in the south, sources have claimed, in the biggest airstrikes since Yemen's new president took office.
Militants have expanded their operations in southern Yemen during months of turmoil which paralysed the country and eventually unseated former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was replaced in a February vote by Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Local residents in Jaar, a southern town seized by militants in March last year, said Yemen's air force had killed 20 al-Qaeda-linked fighters at a military base, also destroying weapons and military equipment.
Last week, the fighters had seized the base from the government and confiscated weaponry and military equipment.
However, a spokesman for Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law) denied its fighters were killed in the raid.
In a separate incident, a government source said the number of militants killed in an air strike launched late on Friday in Bayda, about 267 km southeast of the capital Sanaa, had risen to 25.
He said Hadaar al-Homaiqani, a local al-Qaeda leader, was among the Islamist fighters killed.
Tribal sources said the Bayda attacks were carried out by US drone airplanes, but this was not possible to independently confirm.
Drones used to target militants
The US, working with the Yemeni authorities, has repeatedly used drones to attack militants.
"The bodies were recovered on Saturday morning after the cessation of the attacks carried out by US drone airplanes, and the search for the remaining victims is still under way," one of the sources said.
The US has used its drones repeatedly to attack militants from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, described by CIA Director David Petraeus last year as "the most dangerous regional node in the global jihad".
The US and Saudi Arabia, Yemen's neighbour and the world's No 1 oil exporter, have been deeply worried about the expansion of al-Qaeda in Yemen, where the group controls swathes of land near oil shipping routes through the Red Sea.
The UNHCR warned yesterday Yemen is facing a new wave of internal displacement as tens of thousands of civilians flee tribal clashes in the north and fighting between the government and militants in the south.
UNHCR said it wants $60 million in 2012 for some 216,000 refugees and almost half a million displaced people in Yemen.
