Drone kills five Al-Qaeda suspects in Yemen

A drone air strike blasted two cars carrying suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen in the southern Yemen province of Shabawa on Thursday, killing five of them, a tribal chief and witnesses said. "Five militants belonging to Ansar Al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic law) were killed in a drone strike" in Shabwa, said the tribal chief. Witnesses said the drone fired four missiles at the two cars as they travelled through the town of Saeed in Shabwa, a stronghold of the militant group. "The two cars are still burning and we couldn't get close to them because the drones are still hovering in the area," said a local resident. The tribal chief said gunmen suspected to have links with Al-Qaeda had earlier arrived in four vehicles and "set up a checkpoint on the road linking Saeed and Ataq," Shabwa's provincial capital. The United States is the only country that has drones in the region and in recent months has been carrying out strikes on Al-Qaeda targets in the south and east of the country. Al-Qaeda took advantage of the weakness of Yemen's central government in the 2011 protests against now ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh, seizing large swathes of territory across the south. But after a month-long government offensive that ended in June, most have fled to the more lawless desert regions of the east. Though weakened, the militants continue to launch hit-and-run attacks on government and civilian targets the t