A US drone strike in Yemen killed two people described in corporate media as suspected al Qaeda militants on Sunday, the second such attack in the country in less than a week.<\/p>\n
The strike hit a house in Wadi Adeeda in the Marib province, east of the capital, which was reportedly storing weapons.<\/p>\n
Agence France-Presse adds: “A tribal source said the strike was followed by ground clashes in which two Yemeni soldiers and a militant were killed.”<\/p>\n
The two strikes in the past several days break a nearly three-month lull in US drone strikes on Yemen.<\/p>\n
Following the April 17 drone strike on the Yemeni village of Wessab, Farea Al-Muslimi, a youth activist and writer originally from there, provided via Twitter a counter-narrative to the justifications of drone strikes.<\/p>\n
In an op-ed in Al-Monitor the following day, he questions why a drone strike was necessary at all.<\/p>\n
In an area like Wessab, there is nothing easier than capturing a man like al-Radmi. Two police officers would have been more than capable of arresting him. […]<\/p>\n
…was it really necessary to conduct an operation that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, while two soldiers could have captured the target? […]<\/p>\n
If al-Radmi was a target, an arrest would have been simple. He was not some elusive figure, hiding far from the reach of the central authority. He lived a few hours from Sanaa and less than a kilometer away from government headquarters.<\/p>\n