Daughter of former al Qaeda leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed in an American-UAE joint raid against the terror group in Yemen on Sunday, according to the girl's family. Anwar Al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric who directed attacks against the US from the Arabian Peninsula, was killed in a targeted drone strike in 2011.
The grandfather revealed that the 8-year-old died two hours after being shot. However, several US officials reportedly told CNN that the civilian casualties are still being assessed. There is no hard intelligence suggesting that al-Awlaki's daughter, Nawar Anwar Al-Awlaki, was killed. One of them explained that subsequent intelligence led the military to believe that there was a high likelihood that some civilians were killed during the raid.
Meanwhile, the New York Times yesterday reported that military officials had been discussing about the raid for months under the Obama administration, but Obama decided to let Trump decide as he took over. The new U.S. President personally authorized the attack last week.
The primary target of the raid was supposedly computer materials inside the house that could contain information pertaining future terrorist plots. The newspaper cited a Yemeni official, saying that about eight women and seven children, aged between 3 to 13 years old, had been killed in the raid. The attack also reportedly caused severe damages to a school, a health facility and a mosque.
The U.S. military conducted a series of strikes against the group on the first days of Trump's presidency. The raid was the first counterterrorism operation approved by President Trump though U.S. officials note, given the complexity of the raid.
Al Qaeda's Yemeni affiliate is known to be one of the terror group's most capable franchises. It helped to direct the 2015 attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper offices in Paris.
