The special operations mission targeted Anwar Awlaki, a cleric suspected of involvement in terrorist plots. He escaped but two other terrorist suspects were killed.
By David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times
May 7, 2011
Reporting from Washington
A U.S. drone attack in Yemen was an attempt to kill Anwar Awlaki, an American-born militant suspected of involvement in multiple terrorist plots against the United States, but he eluded the missiles, a U.S. official said Friday.
The strike Thursday, less than a week after U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, was the first U.S. drone strike in Yemen since 2002.
The timing suggests that Bin Laden's death may be prompting the U.S. to carry out operations that it might have passed up in the past, as well as edging Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh toward allowing such strikes after resisting them for the last year.
The specific targeting also indicates U.S. intelligence is developing a sharper focus on high-priority terrorists, although American officials told news agencies that a trove of information seized from the Bin Laden compound in Pakistan did not have any influence on the Awlaki mission.
The U.S. official said multiple missiles were launched during the attack in the southern province of Shabwa and that two men were believed killed, but Awlaki managed to get away, apparently uninjured. Yemen's Defense Ministry confirmed Thursday's drone attack had killed two Al Qaeda militants, identifying them as brothers Musaid and Abdullah Mubarak Daghar, but it provided no other details.
Awlaki, 40, was born in New Mexico and educated in the U.S. He was once considered a peaceful cleric and was even invited to the U.S. Capitol after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to deliver a prayer for Muslim congressional staffers.
But Awlaki gradually became more radicalized, eventually fleeing to Yemen, where he has emerged as a key leader in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot of Bin Laden's group that has been involved in numerous attempts to attack U.S. targets in recent years.
The United States stepped up drone flights over Yemen last year in an effort to find Awlaki and the group's other top leaders. Drones were brought in as part of an effort to improve intelligence gathering on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula after Saleh complained that previous U.S. operations using cruise missiles and airstrikes from manned jet fighters had killed the wrong people.
A U.S. counter-terrorism official said Friday that Saleh imposed tight restrictions on when drones would be allowed to launch strikes at suspected militants. But as Saleh has faced increasing pressure from internal opponents to give up power in recent months, his reluctance to consider drone strikes has eased, the counter-terrorism official said, apparently hoping that doing so would win him continued backing from the Obama administration.
Awlaki's name was added last year to a secret list of targets that the CIA is authorized to kill after the Obama administration concluded that the charismatic cleric, known for his fiery sermons circulated on militant websites denouncing the U.S., had taken on an operational role in attempted terrorist attacks.
