Top Qaeda Figure Killed in Yemen Drone Strike
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) announced that one of its senior members has been killed in a US drone strike in Yemen amid the ongoing Saudi military aggression against the impoverished Arab country.
The AQAP said in a statement posted on Twitter that Ibrahim al-Rubaish was killed "alongside four comrades" on Monday, Yemen-based Arabic-language Khabar news agency reported on Tuesday.
The group did not specify where the purported strike took place.
Rubaish was held in extrajudicial detention in the US-run Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He was released into the custody of Saudi authorities and then escaped in 2006.
The 35-year-old terrorist later joined AQAP in Yemen, where he was the main ideologue of and theological adviser to the Takfiri militant group. Rubaish had a 5-million-dollar bounty on his head.
Meanwhile, Ansarullah fighters and army forces have made fresh gains in their battle against al-Qaeda-linked militants in the central province of Ma’rib despite ongoing Saudi airstrikes against Yemen, Press TV reported.
The revolutionary fighters and the army troopers have made advances in the city of Sirwah, which lies about 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of the capital, Sana’a. Recently, the militants reportedly executed about 15 soldiers in the Azzan region, located in the southern province of Shabwah.
The US and a few of its allies are supporting Saudi Arabia's airstrikes against Yemen.
