Yemen confirms US air strikes

Yemen's foreign minister acknowledged the United States has launched attacks on Al Qaeda in his country in an interview published on Thursday, the first confirmation from Sanaa of a US military role. Abu Bakr Al Kurbi told the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Al Hayat that the US strikes were suspended in December because his government viewed them as having been unsuccessful. However, the New York Times reported in mid-August that the US military carried out a secret air strike in May against a suspected Al Qaeda target in Yemen, killing a deputy provincial governor in the process. According to the paper, the strike was a secret mission by the US military, and was at least the fourth such assault on Al Qaeda in the mountains and deserts of Yemen since December. In June, human rights watchdog Amnesty International released images it said were of fragments of a US Tomahawk cruise missile, reportedly taken at the scene of a Dec. 17 strike in Al Majalah in Abyan province in the south of Yemen, in which it said 55 people, mostly civilians, were killed.