They Didn't Know What Hit Them

By Azadeh Moaveni

The main prey was a man called Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi. Known as Abu Ali, he was, according to Yemeni officials, a former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden's and the local mastermind of the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Aden harbor in October 2000. When an American Predator drone fired its Hellfire missile into al-Harethi's car as it moved along a remote desert road east of Yemen's capital Sana'a, it also killed five other people--all of them al-Qaeda operatives, according to the U.S., one a man Yemen says was a U.S. citizen. He was not just any man, it seems. U.S. officials think he was Kamal Derwish, a Yemeni American cited in federal court papers as the ringleader of an alleged terrorist sleeper cell in Lackawanna, N.Y., outside Buffalo. The putative American in al-Harethi's entourage traveled under the name Ahmed Hijazi, an alias used by Derwish. A positive identification may be difficult: the 5-ft.-long Hellfire turned the six people in the car into a mass of carbonized body parts. "They never knew they were in our sights," a U.S. official said. "And I can assure you, they never knew what hit them."

Pentagon officials hint that the Predator, controlled and operated by the CIA, flew from Djibouti, the new home of the U.S. military command--Joint Task Force Horn of Africa--charged with hunting terrorists in the region. The armed version of the Predator had proved itself in the war in Afghanistan last year, but the attack in Yemen marked the first known use of the drone to kill a terrorist leader outside an acknowledged field of combat--a tactic human-rights advocates liken to assassination. The strike owed its success to a tip from Yemeni authorities on the whereabouts of al-Harethi, and U.S. officials say Yemen gave its permission for the strike. But the action infuriated opponents of the government, who called it a violation of sovereignty. There may be more to come. U.S. counterterror operatives in Yemen are already hunting their next target: Muhammad al-Hamati, a bakery owner who, a U.S. official says, helped al-Harethi with logistics for the Cole bombing. --By Azadeh Moaveni. With reporting by Scott MacLeod/Cairo and Elaine Shannon and Mark Thompson/Washington

With reporting by Scott MacLeod/Cairo and Elaine Shannon and Mark Thompson/Washington, Laura Bradford