Al Qaeda commander in Yemen killed

Yemeni armed forces have killed Said al-Shehri, a Saudi national seen as the second-in-command of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a government website said yesterday.

The ministry of defence said Shehri was killed yesterday, along with six other militants, in what it called a “qualitative operation” by the army in the remote Hadramout province in eastern Yemen.

The militant group, which has planned attacks on international targets including airliners, is described by the US as the most dangerous wing of al Qaeda.

There were conflicting reports on how Shehri, a former inmate of Guantanamo Bay, was killed.

A Yemeni security source said Shehri was killed in an operation last Wednesday in the Hadramout that was thought to have been carried out by a US drone, rather than the Yemeni military. The source said another Saudi and an Iraqi national were among those killed.

Residents of the Wadi al-Ain district where the attack took place said they believed from their contacts with Islamist fighters that Shehri had died then, when missiles struck a house where they were meeting.

“There was a group of people from the Ansar al-Sharia group who were holding a meeting — Shehri was one of them and there were foreigners there too,” said Elwi Suleiman. Ansar al-Sharia is one of a number of Yemeni militant groups linked to al Qaeda.

Shehri was released from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and put through a Saudi rehabilitation programme for militants. He is wanted by Yemeni authorities for a suspected role in a US embassy attack in 2008.

Yemen’s government is trying to re-establish order after an uprising pushed out veteran ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh in February. The protests and factional fighting have allowed al Qaeda’s regional wing to seize swathes of south Yemen, and Shi’ite Muslim Houthi rebels to carve out their own domain in the north.

The lawlessness has alarmed the US and Yemen’s much bigger neighbour Saudi Arabia, which view the impoverished state as a new front line in their war on al Qaeda.

Washington, which has pursued a campaign of assassination by drone and missile against suspected al Qaeda members, backed a military offensive in May to recapture areas of Abyan province.

But militants have struck back with a series of bombings and assassinations.

Meanwhile, a southern Yemeni politician who returned from exile survived an assassination attempt yesterday, a security source said. Last week 10 civilians were killed in an apparent drone attack that missed its target.