SANAA: The chief of Yemen’s department of al-Qaida is lifeless, the militant group introduced late Sunday, with out giving particulars. Khalid al-Batarfi had a $5 million bounty on his head from the US authorities over main the group al-Qaida within the Arabian Peninsula, lengthy thought-about essentially the most harmful department of the extremist group nonetheless working after the killing of founder Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaida launched a video exhibiting al-Batarfi wrapped in a funeral shroud of the al-Qaida black-and-white flag. It provided no particulars on the reason for his demise and there was no clear signal of trauma seen on his face. Al-Batarfi is believed to be in his early 40s. “Allah took his soul while he patiently sought his reward and stood firm, immigrated, garrisoned, and waged jihad for His sake,” the militants mentioned within the video, in response to the SITE Intelligence Group. The group made the announcement on the eve of Ramadan, the Muslim holy fasting month that Yemen will start Monday. Within the announcement, the group mentioned Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki would take over as its chief. The US has a $6 million bounty on him, saying al-Awlaki “has publicly called for attacks against the United States and its allies.” The Yemen department of al-Qaida has seen by Washington as the phobia community’s most harmful department ever since its try in 2009 to bomb a business airliner over america. It claimed duty for the 2015 lethal assault in Paris on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. Al-Batarfi took over as the pinnacle of the department, identified by the acronym AQAP, in February 2020. He succeeded chief Qassim al-Rimi, who was killed by a US drone strike ordered by then-President Donald Trump. Al-Rimi had claimed duty for the 2019 assault on the US Naval Air Station Pensacola through which a Saudi aviation trainee killed three American sailors. Al-Batarfi, born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, travelled to Afghanistan in 1999 and fought alongside the Taliban throughout the US-led invasion. He joined AQAP in 2010 and led forces in taking on Yemen’s Abyan province, in response to the US. In 2015, he was freed after an AQAP raid that noticed the militants seize Mukalla, the capital of Yemen’s largest province, Hadramawt, amid the chaos that adopted Yemen’s Houthi rebels seizing the capital, Sanaa, and as a Saudi-led coalition began a conflict towards the Houthis. A photograph on the time confirmed al-Awlaki with a Kalashnikov rifle, posing inside a authorities palace there. AQAP was later pushed out of Mukalla, however has continued assaults and been the goal of a US drone strike marketing campaign for the reason that administration of then-President George W Bush. In 2020, there had been claims that al-Bartafi had been detained, which later had been denied. In 2021, he referred to the January 6 riot on the US Capitol as “only the tip of the iceberg of what will come to them, God willing.”
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