Monday, September 10, 2012

No. 2 Al Qaeda boss killed by U.S. Drone in Yemen




Washington – News outlets reporting from the U.S. have confirmed that American forensics experts identified the body of Saeed al-Shihiri in the wreckage of a car hit by an attack from an U.S. Unmanned aerial vehicle on Monday, along with the bodies of 6 associates.

The number-two ranked war lord in the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula organization, Mr. al-Shahiri was for 6 years a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay before his release in 2007.

When repatriated to his native Saudi Arabia, Mr. al-Shahiri left Arabia after doing time in an Arabian reindoctrination camp, arriving in Yemen where Al Qaeda took advantage of a power vacuum left by the revolutionary actions of Arab Spring.

Since that time, U.S. and Yemeni defense forces have been working to target and kill top leaders of the terrorist organization, which has expanded into the southern area of the impoverished nation of Yemen.

Last year, in a similar rocket attack launched from an American UAV, American forces killed U.S.-born Anwar Awlaki, who was suspected of participating in an Al Qaeda plot to down an airliner in Detroit, and masterminded the attempted mid-air explosions of several jet cargo planes in 2010.

Al Qaeda has attacked the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, killing 17 sailors with a small boat rigged as an improvised explosive device that blew a hole in the ship's hull as she lay at a pier taking on fuel. In 2002, Al Qaeda operatives attacked a French oil tanker, sinking her off the coast of Yemen.

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