"She was hit with a bullet in her neck and suffered for two hours", Middle East Eye quoted the eight-year-old's grandfather as saying.

"The daughter of Shaykh Anwar Al-Awlaqi is martyred in the US raid in Yemen today. Obama killed his son and now Trump kills his daughter," Jihadist group Al Maqalaat tweeted. The raid that killed Awlaki's daughter was part of a dawn attack in southern Yemen on Sunday that killed a US commando and around 30 people including al-Qaeda suspects and civilians, the US military and local Yemeni officials said.

It was the first combat casualty of the Trump administration and its first operation in the war-damaged Arabian Peninsula nation against a powerful al-Qaeda branch that has been a frequent target of US drone strikes. Medics at the scene said 30 people were killed, including 10 women and three children. Anwar al-Awlaki was an American and Yemeni imam and Islamic lecturer, who US government allege was a senior recruiter and motivator. He was killed in a US drone strike in 2011.