Al-Qaida no. 2 'killed in Yemen'

The Yemen-based branch of al-Qaida said a US drone strike has killed a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who rose to become the group’s No 2 figure.

The announcement, posted on militant websites, gave no date for the death of Saudi-born Saeed al-Shihri.

In January, Yemen’s official Saba news agency reported that al-Shihri died of wounds from a drone strike three months earlier.

The monitoring group Site said today that al-Shihri was eulogised in the video by a senior official in the terrorist group, known as al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

Al-Shihri, also known as Abu Sufyan al-Azdi, fought in Afghanistan and spent six years in Guantanamo. He was returned to Saudi Arabia in late 2007 and later fled to Yemen to join the al-Qaida branch there.