May 25, Kathmandu- A Yemeni security source reported on Saturday that nine Al-Qaeda members were killed in an attack by the United States in southern Yemen.

An official in Abyan province, which is home to Yemen's internationally recognized capital Aden, said the strike killed nine members of the group, including a local leader.

The attack in the northern city of North Khabar, occurred on Friday evening, the security official said. The strikes targeted several locations in the mountainous region used by al-Qaeda.

“I saw a burnt car and five burnt bodies at the scene of the attack,” a local tribal elder told AFP.

A security official who had earlier confirmed the initial death of five al-Qaeda members killed in the attack also said the names of the dead were not known, but that one of the dead was believed to be a local leader of the group.

Washington once considered the group, known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to be the most dangerous branch of the militant network.

Born in 2009 from the merger of Yemeni and Saudi factions of al-Qaeda, AQAP evolved into the chaos of the Yemeni war that has pitted Iran-backed Houthi rebels against a Saudi-led coalition since 2015.

Earlier this month, the United States agreed to a ceasefire with the Houthi rebels, who had controlled large swaths of Yemen for more than a decade.