The Pentagon has for the first time confirmed that US forces are operating inside Yemen, after a group of American officers came under attack in south of the Arab country.
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Yemeni militia claimed on Friday that they had killed a CIA officer in an exchange of fire in the southern city of Aden “after tracking him and determining he was cooperating with the Sana’a government.”
A pentagon spokesman in Washington denied the report of the death but confirmed that a US security team in Aden had been attacked, claiming the team members suffered no injuries.
A Yemeni security official had also confirmed that a gunman had fired several shots at a vehicle carrying US security officers without injuring anyone.
The admission by the US Department of Defense came following numerous previous claims by the US government which denied the deployment of ground troops to Yemen.
The US had for decades propped up the regime of Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh who recently handed presidency to his deputy Abdrabbuh Mansur al-Hadi after a single-candidate election shored up by Washington and Riyadh. Hadi is a UK-trained field marshal.
Protesters in Yemen continue to demand the removal of the regime which abounds with officials from the Ali Abdullah Saleh-era.