The US military launched two airstrikes against the Islamic State combatants in Yemen yesterday. An estimated 60 Islamic State fighters are thought to have been killed in three US strikes that have targeted the group over the past two weeks.
As the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) comes to a close, U.S. military and counter-terrorism officials are setting their sights on the group’s growing presence in the war-torn country of Yemen.
The number of U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State’s Yemeni faction has increased in the past several weeks as the mission for American drones and warplanes against the group’s bastions elsewhere in the Middle East ramp down.
A trio of deadly strikes this month against ISIS training camps in Yemen marks a refocus by American counter-terrorism forces back onto the Gulf state that has been a regular target of U.S. forces battling the Al-Qaeda faction known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula –AQAP, for the past two decades.
But strikes in the country this month are the first time Washington has gone after the Islamic State inside Yemen.
The uptick in U.S. operations against the Yemeni-based Islamic State cells began in mid-October with an airstrike against a suspected camp in the country’s al Bayda governorate.
The strike, which the Pentagon said was critical to “disrupting the organization’s attempts to train new fighters,” was the first such strike specifically targeting Islamic State in the country.
Nine Islamic State fighters were killed in yesterday’s attacks, which took place in Al Bayda province in central Yemen, The Military Times reported. A US Central Command (CENTCOM) official told the news agency that “approximately 60 ISIS combatants” were killed in the three combined airstrikes.
