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| Arabia |
| Yemen army kills Qaeda commander with Chechen links |
| 2014-05-04 |
| [Al Ahram] The Yemeni army on Saturday killed a top Al-Qaeda operative with Chechen links as it pressed an offensive against jihadist hideouts in the restive south, the defence ministry said. Abu Islam al-Shishani was the second foreign jihadist to be killed this week since the military launched its latest offensive on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). News of his death came as officials blamed AQAP for a suicide kaboom at an intelligence post that maimed two guards, and after gunnies killed an army officer in Aden. AQAP, regarded by the United States as the global jihadist network's most dangerous franchise, has been the target of an intensifying drone war this year that has killed dozens. On Friday, AQAP leader Qassem al-Rimi threatened to strike back at any party involved in the drone campaign, and denied that foreigners made up the bulk of the group's jihadists. Shishani was killed "during military operations... against terrorist elements in Abyan ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirateafter seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... " province, said a statement posted on defence ministry website 26sep.net. He had reportedly fought against Russian forces in Chechnya before moving to Yemen to join AQAP, a merger of the network's Yemeni and Saudi branches. On Friday, the defence minister announced that local jihadist commander Abu Mohammedan al-Uzbeki had been killed in festivities, also in Abyan province. A security official said Uzbeki travelled in 2011 from Uzbekistan to Yemen, where he was named an AQAP leader in Abyan. |
| Posted by:Fred |