If confirmed, this indicates our intel and action are better than I had thought.A US operation has killed the senior al-Qaida figure who issued the claim of responsibility
which may be nothing but boasting, but still...
| Being as they are Brave Lions of Islam, one and all, it behooves us to take them at their word, and give them the martyrdom they |
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said that its ideologue Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi was killed with his eldest son
Got some of the next generation too? Good!
and other fighters in Yemen in a US air strike, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which cited the online video.
Ansi's death would suggest the covert US drone program against the Yemen branch of the global militant group is continuing, despite the evacuation of American military advisers from the country amid a worsening civil war.
The US sources said Washington believed Ansi was the AQAP commander of northern Yemen.
| More from An Nahar at 1:45 ET: |
The announcement of his death came in a video posted Thursday on Twitter by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
...the latest incarnation of various Qaeda and Qaeda-allied groups, including the now-defunct Aden-Abyan Islamic Army that boomed the USS Cole in 2000...
The air raid appears to have been carried out overnight on April 21-22, when witnesses in Mukalla said an apparent U.S. drone strike on a vehicle parked near the presidential palace in the city killed six suspected al-Qaeda murderous Moslems.
SITE described Ansi as "a senior AQAP official and military strategist".
Citing an AQAP video issued in November, SITE said the Taez-born Ansi had pursued jihad in Bosnia in 1995 before travelling to Afghanistan via Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic...
and Kashmire to train in al-Qaeda camps. It was in Afghanistan that the terror network's now slain leader the late Osama bin Laden
... who is now sometimes referred to as
Mister Bones...
"tasked him with administrative affairs, before he entered the military field," according to SITE.
"He was tossed in the calaboose
Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try!
in Yemen and released after six months, and in 2011... joined AQAP," said the U.S.-based group that monitors jihadist websites.