Washington: Members of the US Navy's elite SEAL Team 6 killed seven militants, but suffered combat wounds themselves, during an early Tuesday raid on a compound associated with al-Qaeda in Yemen, the Pentagon said.

Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to say how many members of the SEAL unit had been wounded or to describe the extent of their injuries, citing rules for secrecy and operational security. But he said the injured Americans were not in such serious condition that they required medical evacuation.

Reprieve, a London-based human rights organisation, said five civilians had been killed in the raid, including a 70-year-old, partly blind man who was shot when he tried to greet the Navy SEALs, mistaking them for guests arriving in the village. But Davis said: "We don't have reason to believe that's the case."

It was the first ground raid in Yemen that the military has acknowledged since Navy SEALs carried out a similar attack in late January, the first such operation authorised by US President Donald Trump. One Navy SEAL team member died and three others were injured in that mission, and as many as 25 civilians were killed.

Tuesday's raid took the US service members deeper into Yemeni territory than they had ever been before, Davis said.

The Americans, working in cooperation with the Yemeni government, attacked an al-Qaeda encampment in Marib province and then called in support from an AC-130 gunship after a firefight broke out.

In a statement after the operation, the US Central Command said the raid targeted a compound that was linked to the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

US forces killed seven al-Qaeda militants through small-arms fire and precision airstrikes, the statement said, referring to strikes by drones, helicopters or attack planes.

Colonel John Thomas, a Central Command spokesman, said in a telephone interview afterward that the raid had been intended to seize potentially important information from the compound - typically electronic devices such as computers, hard drives and phones - and not to kill or capture a particular individual.

It was unclear why the Defence Department chose to disclose the details of this raid, since US commandos, sometimes working in concert with Special Operations forces from the United Arab Emirates and local Yemeni allies on the ground, have carried out several clandestine raids since the ill-fated one on January 29. The military has called the other raids "site exploitation" missions.

These missions are intended to provide the US  military with more information about the al-Qaeda leadership and operations, as well as insights into other extremist groups in the country.

The Central Command statement said the raid was conducted with the support of the beleaguered Yemeni government, which has been fighting a two-front war: one with Arab allies led by Saudi Arabia against Houthi rebels in the western part of the country, and another against al-Qaeda militants in the country's central and eastern regions.

Thomas said it was too early to tell if the raid on Tuesday had been successful.

Even after the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, US counterterrorism officials have said AQAP poses the most direct threat to the United States, largely because of its proven ability to develop plots to smuggle hard-to-detect bombs aboard passenger airliners bound for the US. So far, three such plots have been thwarted.

New York Times