Yemeni jets pounded the home of a suspected al Qaeda leader yesterday, a military source said, as a top US official acknowledged that Sanaa has made a "decisive turn" against the extremists.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meanwhile, announced in London the suspension of direct flights from Yemen until further security measures are agreed, in the wake of the Christmas Day US airliner bombing scare.
A Yemeni tribal source confirmed the air strikes on Erq Al-Shabwan village in Maarib province east of Sanaa, and said a number of people had been killed. Local forces responded with anti-aircraft fire.
The wave of air strikes, which began in the morning, blasted the house of Ayed al-Shabwani, one of six suspected al Qaeda leaders the government said were killed in an air strike last week, the tribal source said.
The military official, who would not be named, said there had been three strikes on the house and one on a nearby orange grove where the authorities think Shabwani created a safe haven for dozens of al Qaeda members.
In the afternoon, witnesses said, jets twice fired missiles into the grove and afterwards continued to overfly the area.
The strikes come just days after Yemen said it killed six suspected leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including Mr Shabwani, in Saada province north of Sanaa.
AQAP denied anyone was killed in the attack on three 4X4 vehicles in a remote desert area, saying instead that some militants were wounded. No one commented on whether the government now believed Mr Shabwani had in fact survived that raid.
Yemen has come under increased US pressure to clamp down on AQAP since it claimed responsibility for the December 25 bid to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam as it prepared to land in Detroit.
Sanaa points to air strikes in December in remote mountainous areas of Shabwa province, east of the capital, which it says killed more than 60 suspected AQAP operatives, as well as last week's strikes in Saada and a number of recent arrests as proof it is winning the war against the extremists.
Jeffrey Feltman, assistant US secretary of state for near-eastern affairs, acknowledged these efforts yesterday.
"In terms of the government of Yemen's determination and willingness to confront a threat of al Qaeda militants in the country, we should be and we are encouraged by recent steps the government has taken," Mr Feltman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington.
But he insisted the US was not "naive" about the Sanaa government as an ally.