By ANDREW BUNCOMBE and RAYMOND WHITAKER
The hellfire missile fired from the unmanned drone came out of nowhere - silently, without warning and giving little chance of escape.
The alleged senior al Qaeda official Qaed Senyan al-Harthi and his five companions would not have known what hit them.
All that remained of the vehicle in which they were travelling in the Yemeni desert was charred debris scattered in the sand.
Many of the bodies were too badly burned to be identified.
But that patch of blackened sand, 160km east of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, indicates a major shift in America's war on terror.
Washington is now ready, willing and terrifyingly equipped to carry out pre-emptive strikes on suspected terrorists wherever and whenever it finds them.
Amazingly, it is also able to do so from thousands of kilometres away, without risk to its own pilots or ground forces.
The agents who flew the Predator to al-Harthi's vehicle were using a joystick, a camera and a laser and were most likely sitting in an office in the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, 12km west of Washington.
The fact that the Bush Administration has made clear, through the usual "unnamed officials", that it was responsible for the pinpoint strike is also intended to send a clear message to the terrorists: you can hide, but you cannot hide for ever.
The use of such technology could also have important ramifications for any military strike against Iraq.
"It means the rules of engagement have changed," said a former CIA official with a background in special operations.
Clifford Beal, editor of Jane's Defence Weekly, said: "This would be the first time they have started doing this sort of thing.
"It doesn't seem they [al-Harthi's group] were given the opportunity to surrender. They were taken out Israeli-style."
The US and Yemen have been working together since the start of the year in the hunt for al Qaeda operatives, thought to be hiding along the northern border with Saudi Arabia, where the largest unbroken stretch of sand in the world stretches to the foothills of Oman and 800km northwards into Saudi Arabia.
More than half of the Yemen-Saudi border passes over its sands. The line has been surveyed but not demarcated, and there is a history of cross-border trafficking.
It is the perfect hiding place for al Qaeda fugitives on the run after the US-led military operation in Afghanistan.
It was revealed two weeks ago that American unmanned Predator drones were being used to scour these vast stretches of desert in search of al Qaeda fighters.
The 9m $50 million aircraft can fly at more than 8000m, sending back images from cameras fitted on the front.
The James Bond-style technology means the officers controlling the flight can be thousands of kilometres away from the actual scene of the strike.
James Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.Org, a Washington military think-tank, said the drone probably took off from a short runway in Djibouti, across the Red Sea from Yemen, where there has been a steady build-up of US forces in recent months.
But it was very likely that the drone was piloted and the missile fired by officers at CIA headquarters.
"They are literally flying it like a normal aircraft," he said. "There are reports that when the drones were used in Afghanistan, they were flown from Langley."
Pike said the use of such technology, and the admission of its use, was designed to give a clear message to the terrorists.
"It's done to put the fear of the Lord into these guys," he said. "Bumping along in their car, it's quite possible they would not have known what hit them."
Monday morning's strike was not the first time the US has used Predator missiles against terrorists.
In Afghanistan a Predator was used to kill al Qaeda's chief of operations, Muhammad Atef, and last May one was used in an unsuccessful attempt against factional Afghan leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was trying to topple the Government of Hamid Karzai.
But this was the first time one has been used outside Afghanistan - or at least the first time the US has admitted it.
Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on Tuesday: "We've just got to keep the pressure on everywhere we're able to, and we've got to deny the sanctuaries everywhere we're able to and we've got to put pressure on every Government that is giving these people support to get out of that business."
Al-Harthi, a former bodyguard to Osama bin Laden. was considered one of the dozen most senior al Qaeda officials.
He is believed to have been responsible for the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000, when 17 American sailors were killed, and for the recent attack on a French oil tanker off the Yemeni coast.
A Yemeni official said al-Harthi, also known as Abu Ali, was kept under surveillance by Yemeni intelligence operatives for several months, and information was passed to US forces.
He had left a farm and was on the road to the town of Marib when the missile struck.
One Yemeni security official said: "They have been ... monitoring the farm in recent months and relayed all the information they had to the Americans."
The incident highlights the increasingly important relationship between Yemen and the US, which has resulted in American forces training local soldiers.
Washington has also given money to Yemen to recruit up to 80 tribal chieftains in the country's lawless interior to provide information about al Qaeda fugitives.
"The Yemenis were among the quickest to recognise they could get political and financial benefits from the war against terror," said Dr Magnus Ranstorp, deputy director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
"But the co-operation has its limits. Ideally, al-Harthi would have been captured alive and removed for questioning.
"Although the Yemeni Government was able to help the Americans locate him, it has little control in the interior of the country, and this was the next best outcome."
- INDEPENDENT
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