U.S. drone attack kills 3 suspected Qaida members in Yemen

Three suspected al-Qaida members were killed when a U.S. drone fired missiles on a pick-up truck in Yemen's southeastern province of Shabwa, a military source told Xinhua on Monday.

"The U.S. attack destroyed a small pick-up vehicle loaded with weapons and explosives in Khora area in Shabwa province late on Sunday night, killing three people inside the car," the military source said on condition of anonymity.

"The al-Qaida gunmen were attempting to move weapons which they looted in the 19th Infantry Brigade last month," the source said.

A tribal source told Xinhua by phone that "an al-Qaida car filled with arms was shelled and caused huge explosions and rocked the ground in the village."

Yemen, an impoverished Arab country, has been gripped by one of the most active regional al-Qaida insurgencies in the Middle East.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), known locally as Ansar al-Sharia, emerged in January 2009 by unifying al-Qaida branches in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. It had claimed responsibility for a number of attacks on some Western countries.

The United States has carried out more than one hundred rounds of drone strikes in Yemen on the AQAP since 2011, but its operations were halted after the Shiite Houthi group took over the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in September 2014. The United States closed its embassy in Yemen last February, but insisted that it would not suspend anti-terror operations there. Endit