{"id":125314,"date":"2015-06-16T11:00:18","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T11:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=125314"},"modified":"2015-06-16T09:45:11","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T09:45:11","slug":"top-al-qaeda-commander-confirmed-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=125314","title":{"rendered":"Top al-Qaeda commander confirmed dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Al-Qaeda has confirmed that Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of its offshoot in the Arabian Peninsula, has been killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.<\/p>\n

His death was announced by the AQAP group in an online video. His successor was named as military chief Qasim al-Raymi.<\/p>\n

Wuhayshi was seen as al-Qaeda’s second-in-command and was a former private secretary to Osama Bin Laden.<\/p>\n

He built one of the most active al-Qaeda branches, say US officials.<\/p>\n

In Yemen, resurgent al-Qaeda militants have seized territory and infrastructure – indirectly assisted by Saudi-led air strikes on the rebel Houthi movement, their Shia Muslim foes.<\/p>\n

But the deaths of a number of leading figures in AQAP in recent months have reportedly fuelled rumours among supporters that it has been successfully targeted by intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n

The Yemeni news group al-Masdar Online previously reported (in Arabic) thatWuhayshi was killed in an attack in Hadramawt province last Friday.<\/p>\n

“We in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula mourn to our Muslim nation… that Abu Baseer Nasser bin Abdul Karim al-Wuhayshi, may God have mercy on his soul, passed away in an American strike which targeted him along with two of his mujahideen brothers,” Khaled Batarfi, a senior member of the group, said in the video.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon has previously said it would not comment on the killing – which the Site intelligence group has said would constitute the biggest strike on al-Qaedasince Bin Laden’s death in Pakistan in 2011.<\/p>\n

\"null\"
Wuhayshi’s death was announced by senior AQAP figure Khaled Batarfi in a video posted online<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"null\"<\/figure>\n

The US State Department offered a $10m (\u00a36.4m) reward for anyone who could help bring Wuhayshi – who is believed to have been in his 30s – to justice.<\/p>\n

It said he was “responsible for approving targets, recruiting new members, allocating resources to training and attack planning, and tasking others to carry out attacks”.<\/p>\n

Wuhayshi, himself a Yemeni, travelled to Afghanistan in the late 1990s where he trained and went on to fight in the battle of Tora Bora in late 2001 before escaping into Iran.<\/p>\n

There he was arrested and extradited to Yemen, where he was jailed until he escaped in 2006.<\/p>\n

‘Greater and worse’<\/strong><\/p>\n

He became head of al-Qaeda in Yemen and then head of AQAP when the Yemeni and Saudi branches of al-Qaeda merged in 2009.<\/p>\n

When Bin Laden was killed, Wuhayshi warned Washington that al-Qaeda was not dead.<\/p>\n

“What is coming is greater and worse, and what is awaiting you is more intense and harmful,” he said.<\/p>\n

Since late January 2015, AQAP has lost a number of high-profile figures in US drone strikes – including religious official Harith al-Nadhari, religious official Ibrahim al-Rubaish, and religious and military official Nasser al-Ansi, along with lower ranking figures.<\/p>\n

The proximity and precision of these assassinations has given rise to rumours in jihadist circles that AQAP has been infiltrated by spies, BBC Monitoring reports.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Al-Qaeda has confirmed that Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of its offshoot in the Arabian Peninsula, has been killed in a US drone strike in Yemen. His death was announced by the AQAP group in an online video. His successor was named as military chief Qasim al-Raymi. Wuhayshi was seen as al-Qaeda’s second-in-command and was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":125319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-125314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/125319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}