Washington, June 14 : The Central Intelligence Agency is planning to launch a secret mission to kill Al-Qaeda militants in Yemen, where months of antigovernment protests, an armed revolt and the attempted assassination of the president have left a power vacuum, US officials have said.

The covert program is the latest step to combat the growing threat from Al Qaeda''s outpost in Yemen, which has been the source of several attempted attacks on the US and is home to an American-born cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki.

The CIA program will be a major expansion of US counter terrorism efforts in Yemen, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Since December 2009, the US military has carried out strikes in Yemen with intelligence support from CIA, but now the spy agency will carry out aggressive drone strikes itself.

The US military strikes have been conducted with the permission of the Yemeni government.

The CIA operates under different legal restrictions, giving the administration a freer hand to carry out strikes even if Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh reverses his past approval of military strikes or cedes power to a government opposed to them, the paper said.

The CIA program also affords the US greater operational secrecy, and because CIA drones use smaller warheads than most manned military aircraft, US officials hope they will reduce the risk of civilian casualties and minimize any anti-American backlash in Yemen, it added.

According to the paper, the Yemen program, secretly approved by US President Barack Obama last year, is modeled on the agency''s covert program in Pakistan, which has killed 1,400 militants.

The program is authorized under the same broad 2001 presidential finding that created the legal underpinnings for the program in Pakistan.

The Yemen program had been planned to begin in July, but the launch time may be moved back a few weeks to accommodate planning and logistical needs, the paper quoted US officials, as saying.

According to the officials, the new CIA drone program will initially focus on collecting intelligence to share with the military. As the intelligence base for the program grows, it will expand into a targeted killing program like the current operation in Pakistan. (ANI)