...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...
Activists from the city of Ma’rib said that Hamad Hammoud al-Othman al-Tamimi, a Saudi national judicial authority for 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...
, was killed last Sunday, along with one of his
The Saudi coalition forces in Ma’rib had refused to reveal the details of the raid and cordoned off the area targeted by the US raid last Sunday.
Previously, al-Qaeda has mourned many of its leaders who were killed in air strikes while they were in the coalition-held Wadi Abaidah area of Ma’rib, while they were fighting alongside coalition forces on Ma’rib fronts.
According to the organization’s video, al-Tamimi, who joined al-Qaeda in 2002, was arrested in 2007, and placed in al-Tarfiya prison in al-Qassim area of Saudi Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Fifteen of the nineteen WTC hijackers were Saudis, and most major jihadi commanders were Saudis, to include Osama bin Laden. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman quietly folded that tent in 2016, doing terrible things to the guys running it, and has since been dragging the kingdom into the current century...The new operation may represent a blow to Saudi Arabia, which is using the organization to strengthen its grip on Ma’rib, in light of the resentment of the Islah party, the wing of the Moslem Brüderbund, at Riyadh’s measures to reduce its influence in the oil province.
Al-Tamimi joined al-Qaeda in Yemen after the Saudi authorities released him in 2012.
Hamad bin Hamoud al-Tamimi, a top leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which Washington regards as among the global jihadist network's most dangerous branches, died in the strike along with a bodyguard, a security official said, requesting anonymity.
The air strike, targeting a house in the northern province of Marib that al-Tamimi had recently rented, was "apparently American", the official said. A Marib government official, also speaking anonymously, confirmed the deaths.
Tamimi, a Saudi also known as Abdel Aziz al-Adnani, headed up AQAP's leadership council and acted as the militant group's "judge", the sources said. The "president of the consultative council and judge, known as Abdel Aziz al-Adnani, was killed with a Yemeni bodyguard", the Marib official said.
AQAP, and rival militants loyal to the Islamic State group, have thrived in the chaos of Yemen's civil war, which pits the Saudi-backed government against Iran-allied Huthi rebels. AQAP has carried out operations against both the Huthis and government forces as well as sporadic attacks abroad. Its leaders have been targeted by a US drone war for more than two decades, although the number of strikes has dropped off in recent years.
The attack comes a month after three alleged AQAP militants were killed in a suspected US drone strike on a car in Marib province.