Yemen bombs house of senior al Qaeda leader

Yemeni aircraft carried out a wave of air strikes Wednesday on the home of a suspected Al-Qaeda leader, Ayed al-Shabwani, whom the government said it had killed last week, a tribal source said. The raids, which started in the morning, blasted the house in the village of Erq Al-Shabwan, in Maarib province's Al-Shabwan region, and were continuing into the afternoon, said the source, according to AFP.

Tribal forces in the area were responding with anti-aircraft fire and a number of people had been killed, the source added.

Meanwhile, a U.N. Security Council sanctions committee on Tuesday added al Qaeda's Yemen-based arm and two of its leaders to a U.N. blacklist, which American envoy Susan Rice said would help efforts to weaken the group. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and its two leaders now face mandatory global asset-freezes and travel bans, she said. "Today's actions strengthen international efforts to degrade the capabilities of AQAP," said Rice, according to Reuters.