San’a (Sunatimes) The United States is building an array of secret new drone bases to conduct strikes against Al-Qaeda targets in Somalia and Yemen, reveals the Washington Post.

According to the AFP news agency, the Post reported late on Tuesday that one of the new installations is being set up in Ethiopia, a close US ally in the fight against Al-Shabaab militia group in Somalia, while another is being established in the Seychelles.

It said the United States is also conducting drone missions over both Somalia and Yemen from the small African country Djibouti, seeking to weaken Al-Qaeda affiliates in both countries.

It quoted a former senior US military official as saying that it is a conscious recognition that those are the hot spots developing right now.

The Post added that a small fleet of so-called “hunter-killer” drones that can fire Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs which are already based on the Indian Ocean archipelago resumed operations this month after a pilot mission demonstrated that they could effectively patrol Somalia from there.

The US has been expressing growing alarm about the growth of Al-Qaeda in increasingly lawless regions in both Somalia and Yemen, fearing that such militants could launch attacks on the United States.

The Post reported that in late June this year, two senior Al-Shabaab commanders were wounded in what appeared to have been the first US drone strike on the country.

The U.S regularly launches drone strikes against suspected militants along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where it claims to have greatly degraded Al-Qaeda’s core leadership.

By Abdisalan Abdulle