Al-Qaeda in Yemen denies death of No.2 commander

PanARMENIAN.Net - Al-Qaeda in Yemen posted a statement on militant websites Monday, April 8 saying that its second-most senior commander has not been killed. It was the second time the group has denied Saeed al-Shihri’s death, according to The Associated Press.

The Saudi national, who fought in Afghanistan and spent six years in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, is “alive and in good health,” according to a senior al-Qaeda cleric in Yemen and the group’s media arm, al-Malahem. The cleric, Abu-Saad Al-Aamly, posted the claim on his Facebook account.

It came as nine people were killed in separate incidents of violence throughout Yemen. Also, its capital city was without electricity on Monday after militants attacked electricity cables connecting Sanaa to the province of Marib, where an oil pipeline was also blown up.

Washington considers the local al-Qaeda branch, known as al-Qaeda in The Arabian Peninsula, as the most dangerous and active of the group’s offshoots.

A Yemeni police official told the AP that security forces may have been too quick announcing al-Shihri’s death in January, based on information from Saudi Arabia. The official spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to release the information to reporters.

Yemeni security officials had claimed the al-Qaeda commander was killed by a U.S. drone strike. The country’s state news agency, SABA, reported in January that al-Shirhi was in a coma after a missile attack in late November, but did not make clear if he had died.

Yemen had previously announced al-Shihri’s death in September last year. A DNA test, however, proved that the body recovered was not that of al-Shihri. A month later, al-Shihri denied his own death in an audio message posted on Jihadi websites.