United States triples the number of deadly airstriks , causes most severe humanitarian crisiathis year

YemenExtra

Y.A

The United States has tripled the number of airstrikes this year against what it claimed to fight Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen. American allies have pushed the militants from their lucrative coastal strongholds. And the Pentagon recently boasted of killing a number of Qaeda leaders .

Yet the top United States counterterrorism official and other American intelligence analysts concede the campaign has barely dented the terrorist group’s ability to strike United States interests.

“It doesn’t feel yet that we’re ahead of the problem in Yemen,” Nicholas J. Rasmussen, who stepped down last month after three years as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in an interview.

Even as President Trump lauds the demise of AL-Qaeda’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the threat of a terrorist attack — with the most commonly feared target a commercial airliner — emanating from the chaotic, ungoverned spaces of Yemen remains high on the government’s list of terrorism concerns, he claimed .

In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab nations began a military campaign aimed at pushing back the so called -Houthis and restoring the illegal government. That campaign has so far failed to do so and has instead caused the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis, the worst outbreak of cholera in contemporary history and widespread child malnutrition.

Since Feb. 28, as part of President Trump’s intensified campaign against terrorists, the United States has conducted nearly 130 airstrikes in Yemen — with about 10 against “Daesh”, backed by Saudi Arabia,, according to the Pentagon’s Central Command. That is up from 38 strikes in 2016.

The Central Command boasted in an unusual statement last month that the airstrikes and Special Operations raids had killed members important Qaeda leaders.