Nasser al-Wuhayshi: US drone strike kills Al Qaeda leader in Yemen
A US airstrike has killed the leader of Al Qaeda鈥檚 affiliate in Yemen, the organization鈥檚 most powerful branch, in the latest setback to the global terror network spawned by Osama bin Laden.聽
The group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), announced the death of Nasser al-Wuhayshi along with two other operatives in a video statement released Tuesday. The group said that its military commander, Qassim al-Raimi, had been chosen to replace Wuhayshi.
As the head of operations in Yemen since 2002, Wuhayshi was Al Qaeda's second-ranking leader, making his death the biggest blow to Al Qaeda since the killing of bin Laden in 2011.
"Our Muslim nation, a hero of your heroes and a master of your masters left to God, steadfast," Khaled Batrafi, a senior Al Qaeda operative, said in the video, vowing that the group's war against America would continue.
"In the name of God, the blood of these pioneers makes us more determined to sacrifice," he said. "Let the enemies know that the battle is not with an individual ... the battle led by crusaders and their agents is colliding with a billion-member nation."
The death of Wuhayshi comes at a crucial time for Al Qaeda as it for the leadership of global jihad, The Associated Press reports:
Both groups are dedicated to bringing about Islamic rule by force, but al-Qaida does not recognize the IS group's self-styled caliphate and has maintained that the priority should be to wage jihad against America in order to drive it out of the Middle East.
A veteran jihadi who once worked closely with bin Laden, Wuhayshi was a charismatic leader who helped plan several near-miss terror plots in the United States. They included an attempt to bring down an airliner with a bomb hidden in an operative鈥檚 underwear in 2009 and a plot to sneak bombs onto a cargo plane in 2010.
American counterterrorism officials are certain to view the killing of Wuhayshi 鈥� which occurred in the southern Yemeni port of Mukalla last week 鈥� as , The New York Times reports.
He built the affiliate 鈥� into what was seen as the global organization鈥檚 most active branch and the most dangerous threat against the United States, even though its attempts to blow up airliners聽over American soil have failed.
But his death also comes as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has grown more powerful in Yemen, capitalizing on civil war to capture territory and forge new alliances with Sunni tribes to fight the聽Houthis, a Shiite rebel group聽that controls large parts of the country.
Analysts told The Washington Post that the newly acquired territory in war-torn Yemen could eventually be against the US and Europe. Even without Wuhayshi, the group is likely to remain a potent terrorist threat, according to US officials and counterterrorism experts.
The same can be said about the Al Qaeda branch in North Africa, who reportedly lost its leader, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, in a US airstrike over the weekend.
鈥淭he ideology, the message, and the mythology they created now outlives them, and I don鈥檛 think their passage is really going to be the end of this problem,鈥� Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst who is a counterterrorism expert at the Brookings Institution, told The Post.
