1 of 4. Boys gather near the wreckage of a car destroyed in 2012 by a U.S. drone air strike targeting suspected al Qaeda militants in Azan, in the southeastern Yemeni province of Shabwa, in this February 3, 2013 file photo. 
 
 SANAA (Reuters) - On January 23, science teacher Ali Nasser al-Qawli had finished supervising school exams in the Yemeni village of Khawlan and was enjoying an afternoon with friends when he encountered the strangers. 
 
 They wanted a lift in a taxi Qawli and his nephew were in. A while later, locals say, an American aircraft fired missiles at the vehicle. 
 
 "All of us in the village heard a large explosion," said Qawli's brother, Mohamed, who rushed to the scene. "We picked up the burned body parts. They were all over. We picked them up and put them in plastic bags, and took them to the hospital so we could bury them the next day," he said. "My brother was completely charred. We identified him by his teeth. It's as if they killed animals." 
 
 A copy of the Khalid bin al-Walid school attendance register shows Qawli's signature for the first four days of that week. Under Thursday it says: "Martyred on January 23, 2013." 
 
 At the time local sources told Reuters the strike killed at least six suspected al Qaeda militants. 
 
 The Yemeni government now says Qawli, who had three children, and his nephew were not militants but innocent civilians. In a statement, it concluded: "We can confirm the following: Ali al-Qawli ... did not know or communicate with the individuals who rented the mentioned car and their death was a matter of fate." 
 
 It was just one instance in which Yemeni civilians have perished in U.S. drone strikes, which are Washington's favored method of combating al Qaeda in Yemen. 
 
 On Thursday, 15 people on their way to a wedding were killed when an air strike missed its intended target of suspected militants, Yemeni officials said. It was not clear whether a drone or a Yemeni aircraft was responsible for the attack. 
 
 The United States says its drone program has been successful in eliminating members of al Qaeda in various countries. Some Yemenis say had it not been for such strikes, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) could have seized more territory across Yemen. 
 
 Yemeni foreign minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi told Reuters in September that the drone strikes were a "necessary evil" and a "very limited affair" that happens in coordination with the Yemeni government. 
 
 Other Yemenis, and some U.S. politicians, say the strikes and civilian casualties are increasing sympathy for AQAP and resentment against America. AQAP, which has scattered across the country, is now targeting local police and security officials, who have only tenuous control in Yemen. 
 
 There are near daily suicide attacks on Yemeni police and security forces, which Yemeni officials blame on suspected AQAP militants. On December 5 more than 50 people died when an estimated 12 militants attacked the Yemeni defense ministry compound in Sanaa. 
 
 The threat is more than local: Yemen borders oil producer Saudi Arabia and is next to major shipping routes. 
 
 Mohamed, brother of the dead Qawli, told Reuters: "These (drone) strikes create more terrorism. In our area there was never anyone linked to al Qaeda. After the strike, everyone in the area started listening to al Qaeda types, exchanging videos on mobile phones." 
 
 He said that many houses in his area now fly a black flag carrying an Islamic expression of faith - a symbol al Qaeda often uses. 
 
 U.S. Congressman Alan Grayson, a Democrat representative in Florida, told Reuters that according to one U.S. official who served in Yemen, "every drone death yields 50 to 60 new recruits for Al Qaeda." Grayson, who recently participated in a Congressional briefing that included relatives of victims of drone strikes, described the drone policy as "ineffective." 
 
 The Yemeni government, struggling to assert control over vast swathes of territory where rebels and secessionists sometimes hold sway, tolerates the attacks and does not usually comment on the U.S. role in specific incidents. But Rajeh Badi, the media advisor to Yemen's prime minister, told Reuters: "The strikes have caused, in some instances, the joining of some individuals with AQAP with the motive of revenge, especially when the strikes target innocents." 
 
 Asked about the drone program and civilian casualties, a U.S. State Department official referred to President Barack Obama's comments in May in which Obama said that before any strike is made "there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured." 
 
 The official added: "Yemen and the United States are robust partners in the fight against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. We support the efforts of the Yemeni government and its security forces in combating AQAP." 
 
 SPREAD OF AQAP 
 
 Formed in 2009, AQAP has a reputation as one of al Qaeda's most formidable regional wings, conducting suicide attacks on tourists and diplomats, and operations against neighboring Saudi Arabia and U.S. targets abroad. 
 
 In 2011 al Qaeda militants charged into the south Yemen towns of Zinjibar, Jaar and Shuqra in Abyan province and set up Islamic "emirates" when the country was in the midst of an uprising that eventually ousted veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh. To broaden their appeal, the militants renamed themselves Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), appointed spokesmen to deal with the media and put up signposts and flags. 
 
 Abyan's governor, Jamal al-Aqel, faced a big challenge to drive out the militants, who enjoyed some local support, when he took up his post in April 2012. "We were running the province and running the fighting from nine square kilometers," Aqel, who wears a small pistol on his belt, told Reuters. "Al Qaeda does not move except within the confines of an environment that helps it to move. I consider that the environment that used to help is now missing." 
 
 Yemeni security forces managed to drive the militants out in June 2012 after more than a year of political turmoil that had taken Yemen to the brink of civil war. 
 
 U.S. officials credit the drone strategy for the fact that AQAP is no longer able to control territory in Yemen as it did in 2011. Drone attacks killed several suspected AQAP figures, including Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Islamist militant who orchestrated plots to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009 and U.S. cargo planes in 2010. Awlaki was killed in September 2011. 
 
 BACKLASH 
 
 Despite the toll taken on militants, residents in various parts of Yemen told Reuters they worry that the drone program is counter-productive. In the capital Sanaa, Abdulrazzaq al-Jamal, a journalist who has interviewed several members of AQAP, acknowledged the group has taken some hits from the drones, but said the strikes have also brought it followers. 
 
 "The drones have limited their movements but it makes their ideology more attractive to people. When a Yemeni is killed, it doesn't matter whether or not he's al Qaeda," said Jamal, who was wearing the dagger common among Yemeni men. 
 
 He said some Salafists - followers of a strict form of Sunni Islam - are angry the strikes are hitting Sunnis, who form the majority in Yemen, rather than Shi'ite Houthi rebels, who have been fighting the government for years. 
 
 "Going after al Qaeda has made a lot of Salafists closer to them. Why don't those drones go after armed Shi'ites who call for ‘Death to America, Death to Israel'," said Jamal, referring to the refrain many hardline Shi'ites use in Yemen and elsewhere. 
 
 "Hundreds of families are seeking revenge from the U.S. so they deal with that by joining al Qaeda." 
 
 In Jaar, a decrepit village in Abyan province where the smell of fresh fish at the outdoor market hangs in the air, sympathy for the militants was still evident. 
 
 Jaar has seen several attacks, though it is unclear whether by U.S. drones or by the Yemeni airforce. Burned shells of cars destroyed in a strike two years ago still sit near mounds of rubble where one-storey brick homes once stood. 
 
 Villagers' accounts differ on whether some of the victims were members of al Qaeda, but all those Reuters spoke to said some of the victims had been civilians. 
 
 Just off a poorly paved road where motorbikes and donkey carts vied for space, Hozam, a butcher who stood outside his home, described a strike that destroyed the house near him where six men had moved in. 
 
 "I grabbed the children and took them away as we breathed in gunpowder and smoke. I saw people bring out severed heads and torn body parts," he said of the strike which took place in mid-2012. 
 
 His wife, Umm Abdallah, said that when militants had controlled the area, people had had more access to electricity and water. Yemeni officials say such views are misguided and exaggerated. 
 
 Tribal leaders, who have a lot of influence within Yemen's complex social structure, warn of rising sympathy for al Qaeda. Awad Ahmed Mohsen from Majallah, a southern village hit by a drone strike that killed dozens in 2009, told Reuters that America had brought hatred with its drones. 
 
 Asked if more people joined al Qaeda in the wake of attacks that killed civilians, Mohsen said: "Definitely. And even those who don't join, now sympathize with al Qaeda because of these strikes, these violations. Any American they see, they exact revenge, even if it's a civilian." 
 
 NO SILVER BULLET 
 
 The strikes have forced the militants to travel in smaller numbers to avoid detection; but in some ways that makes it harder for Yemen's security forces to target them. 
 
 "What you've got now is a more dispersed AQAP that focuses on guerrilla tactics and asymmetrical attacks against Yemeni forces," said Barbara Leaf, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Arabian Peninsula, at a Congressional sub-committee hearing in November. "I wish there were a silver bullet approach to this. There isn't, we know it, the Yemenis know it." 
 
 At the same hearing Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican representative in Florida, said: "Al Qaeda has not been decimated, it is not on the run, it is resurgent throughout the region and Yemen is no different." 
 
 Several drone strikes were launched against suspected militants in August after authorities detected a plot against U.S. embassies, but the pace has slowed since then. 
 
 Leaf said that continued U.S. support for Yemen's security was "critical" and acknowledged that while the Yemeni government had the will to counter AQAP, "it does not have the capacity at this time to extend security throughout all parts of this country." 
 
 Facing a backlash from international rights groups, and an American public wary of getting involved in more regional conflicts, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee approved a plan to provide greater oversight of drone strikes, including an annual public accounting of casualties. But in late November, the House of Representatives voted against such a move. 
 
 Others believe the only long-term answer to militants in the region is diplomacy. Hamoud Hitar, a former religious endowments minister in Yemen who headed a rehabilitation program for jailed militants in the early 2000s, said the way to deal with militants was through changing their ideology. 
 
 Dressed in a crisp white thawb and trim turban at his home in Sanaa, Hitar said: "Using force only reinforces the ideology of force. We have to work on (changing) the ideological roots, otherwise terrorism will continue." 
 
 (Additional reporting by Mohamed Ghobari in Sanaa; Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Richard Woods and Simon Robinson) ||||| Missiles fired by a U.S. drone slammed into a convoy of vehicles traveling to a wedding party in central Yemen on Thursday, killing at least 13 people, Yemeni security officials said. 
 
 The officials said the attack took place in the city of Radda, the capital of Bayda province, and left charred bodies and burnt out cars on the road. The city, a stronghold of al-Qaida militants, witnessed deadly clashes early last year between armed tribesmen backed by the military and al-Qaida gunmen in an attempt to drive them out of the city. 
 
 There were no immediate details on who was killed in the strike, and there were conflicting reports about whether there were militants traveling with the wedding convoy. 
 
 A military official said initial information indicated the drone mistook the wedding party for an al-Qaida convoy. He said tribesmen known to the villagers were among the dead. 
 
 One of the three security officials, however, said al-Qaida militants were suspected to have been traveling with the wedding convoy. 
 
 While the U.S. acknowledges its drone program in Yemen, it does not usually talk about individual strikes. 
 
 If further investigations determine that the victims were all civilians, the attack could fuel an outburst of anger against the United States and the government in Sanaa among a Yemeni public already opposed to the U.S. drone strikes. 
 
 Civilian deaths have bred resentments on a local level, sometimes undermining U.S. efforts to turn the public against the militants. The backlash in Yemen is still not as large as in Pakistan, where there is heavy pressure on the government to force limits on strikes _ but public calls for a halt to strikes are starting to emerge. 
 
 In October, two U.N. human rights investigators called for more transparency from the United States and other countries about their drone programs, saying their secrecy is the biggest obstacle to determining the civilian toll of such strikes. 
 
 The missile attacks in Yemen are part of a joint U.S.-Yemeni campaign against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which Washington has called the most dangerous branch of the global terrorist network. 
 
 Thursday's drone strike is the second since a massive car bombing and coordinated assault on Yemen's military headquarters killed 56 people, including foreigners. Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was retaliation for U.S. drone strikes that have killed dozens of the group's leaders. 
 
 Security forces in the Yemeni capital boosted their presence Thursday, setting up checkpoints across the city and sealing off the road to the president's residence, in response to what the Interior Ministry called threats of "terrorist plots" targeting vital institutions and government buildings. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the Yemen's restive northern, ultraconservative Sunni Muslim militants and rebels belonging to a branch of Shiite Islam battled each other with artillery and machine guns in clashes that killed more than 40 people, security officials said. 
 
 The violence between Islamic Salafi fighters and Hawthi rebels has raged for weeks in Yemen's northern province of Saada, but the latest sectarian clashes marked an expansion of the fighting to the neighboring province of Hagga. The government brokered a cease-fire last month to try to end the violence, but both sides have repeatedly broken the truce. 
 
 Officials said clashes began when ultraconservative Salafis took over a Hawthi stronghold in a mountainous area near the border with Saudi Arabia. The officials say that most of the casualties were on the Hawthi side. 
 
 The officials said that Salafis, however, accused Hawthis of trying to infiltrate their strongholds in the town of Fagga. 
 
 The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the fighting publicly. 
 
 Hawthi launched in insurgency in 2004 against autocratic President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who stepped down in 2012 after a popular uprising against his rule. Over the course of the Hawthi rebellion, hundreds of people were killed and an estimated 125,000 people uprooted until the rebels and the government struck a fragile cease-fire in 2010. 
 
 But the north remained restive despite the truce, and fighting flared along another fault line in November after Hawthis accused the Salafis of trying to gain a foothold in their territory by spreading their brand of Islam. 
 
 The rebels say their community of Shiite Muslims suffers discrimination and neglect and that the government has allowed ultraconservative Sunni extremists too strong a voice in the country. Hard-line Sunnis consider Shiites heretics. ||||| SANAA Fifteen people on their way to a wedding in Yemen were killed in an air strike after their party was mistaken for an al Qaeda convoy, local security officials said on Thursday. 
 
 The officials did not identify the plane in the strike in central al-Bayda province, but tribal and local media sources said that it was a drone. 
 
 "An air strike missed its target and hit a wedding car convoy, ten people were killed immediately and another five who were injured died after being admitted to the hospital," one security official said. 
 
 Five more people were injured, the officials said. 
 
 The United States has stepped up drone strikes as part of a campaign against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), regarded by Washington as the most active wing of the militant network. 
 
 Yemen, AQAP's main stronghold, is among a handful of countries where the United States acknowledges using drones, although it does not comment on the practice. 
 
 Human Rights Watch said in a detailed report in August that U.S. missile strikes, including armed drone attacks, have killed dozens of civilians in Yemen. 
 
 Stabilizing the country, which is also struggling with southern separatists and northern rebels, is an international priority due to fears of disorder in a state that flanks top oil producer Saudi Arabia and major shipping lanes. 
 
 On Monday, missiles fired from a U.S. drone killed at least three people travelling in a car in eastern Yemen. 
 
 (Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
– Apparently wedding parties look a lot like al-Qaeda convoys from the air? In what local media is calling a drone attack, at least 13 people were killed on their way to a wedding in Yemen yesterday; another 5 were injured, the AP reports. Reuters puts the death toll at 15. Local officials say the group was wrongly identified as an al-Qaeda convoy, but one official tells the AP that al-Qaeda fighters were suspected of being among the party. Also unclear: Yemeni officials say a US drone fired the missiles, but Reuters reports that it's not known whether a Yemeni aircraft was responsible for the attack, which left charred bodies and burnt cars on the road. If it's the former, Reuters notes in a separate report that the attack may have been counter-productive. "These (drone) strikes create more terrorism," says one man whose brother, an innocent civilian according to the Yemeni government, was killed in a strike earlier this year after unknowingly riding in a car with suspected al-Qaeda members. "In our area there was never anyone linked to al-Qaeda. After the strike, everyone in the area started listening to al-Qaeda types, exchanging videos on mobile phones." Says a US official who served in Yemen: "Every drone death yields 50 to 60 new recruits for al-Qaeda."