Qaeda Branch Leader Said to Be Among Dead in Yemen Drone Strike SANA, Yemen - A drone aircraft attacked a group of people preparing to attack Yemeni troops on Thursday, killing at least nine, including a man identified as a leader of the local branch of Al Qaeda, according to Yemeni and security officials, who said the drone was American-operated. The strike took place less than a mile from a Yemeni brigade's position in the southern province of Abyan, the officials said, adding that troops from the brigade found and defused an explosive belt that was wrapped around the waist of one of the dead, identified as Nader Al Shaddadi, one of the top leaders of Al Qaeda in the region. The officials spoke in return for anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters. Local residents said they had identified four other bodies but that the remaining four dead were not known to them. The use of drones to mount attacks in Yemen has been contentious, with critics and some American government officials saying that the strikes cause civilian casualties that can fuel anti-American sentiment. American military strikes in Yemen started in late 2009. They were directed at terrorism suspects, particularly members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the network's branch in Yemen. The drone attacks were suspended here in May 2010, partly because of concerns about civilian deaths, including the killing of a Yemeni deputy provincial governor. But President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi endorsed the drone strike program last month during a visit to Washington, saying that Yemen's air force could not mount attacks at night and praising the drones" accuracy as "unmatched by the human brain." In a separate episode on Thursday, two people were killed and three were injured in explosions at a training facility in Sana, the capital, military and medical sources said. The Ministry of Defense said in a statement on its Web site that the explosions were accidental, touched off by a missile in storage. One soldier was killed at the training facility and another person died in a residential compound nearby. The huge blasts brought panicked students from nearby schools into the street.