THE US dropped dozens of bombs on al-Qaida targets in Yemen yesterday for a second consecutive day, allegedly wounding civilians and destroying homes.

According to officials the strikes focused on the central mountainous region where Bayda, Shabwa and Abyan provinces meet.

Residents of the southern Yemen village of Wadi Yashbum told Reuters that some of the strikes hit homes, injuring women and children.

An anonymous senior official in former president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s Riyadh-based government described the strikes as “openended” and said they raised questions about the objectives of such an operation.

On Thursday Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis confirmed the attacks, saying they were aimed at degrading al-Qaida’s ability to “co-ordinate external terror attacks” and to limit its use of Yemen as a “safe space for terror plotting.”

The strikes are believed to have hit the home of the al-Qaida leader in the area Saad Atef. Eight suspected al-Qaida fighters were also reportedly killed during the raid.

Bayda tribal leader Sadek al-Jaouf, told the Associated Press that houses were bombed in the Yakla district — the area where a US special operations raid in January this year saw a US commando killed, six troops wounded and a MV-22 tilt rotor plane destroyed.

A total of 25 civilians were killed in the botched operation, including 10 children and nine women, casting an early blemish on US President Donald Trump’s pledge to end overseas interventions.