Top Al-Qaeda militant, 3 aides taken out in Yemen drone strike

ADEN: At least four suspected Al-Qaeda militants were killed on Friday in a presumed US drone strike in Yemen’s central Al-Bayda province, a local government source said.
The strike took place in the district of Rada’a and killed the local Al-Qaeda leader there and three others, the government source told Reuters. Tribal sources put the death toll at five.
A tribal source told AFP the early morning strike on a vehicle travelling in Manasseh village killed Qaeed Al-Dhahab and two other men.
Witnesses confirmed the death of Dhahab, a military chief of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who had previously fought with the group in Iraq.
The tribal source said Dhahab was killed just hours after his marriage on Thursday. He was the brother of Tarek Al-Dhahab, an AQAP leader who in January 2012 with other militants briefly overran the town of Radah in Bayda province before being killed by Yemeni troops.
Seen as a high-profile AQAP leader, Qaeed Al-Dhahab was also the brother-in-law of Yemeni-born American cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, a key figure in AQAP who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011.