ISLAMABAD – The US has killed Qasim al-Rimi, the top al-Qaeda leader inYemen, the White House said Thursday.
“The United States conducted a counterterrorism operation in Yemen thatsuccessfully eliminated Qasim al-Rimi, a founder and the leader ofal-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and a deputy to al-Qa’ida leaderAyman al-Zawahiri,” it said in a statement, using another spelling for thegroup.
Seen as a possible heir to al-Zawahiri, al-Rimi joined al-Qaeda in the1990s, working in Afghanistan for the late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
It said under al-Rimi, the AQAP carried out violence against civilians andsought to conduct and inspire attacks against the US and its forces.
“His death further degrades AQAP and the global al-Qa’ida movement, and itbrings us closer to eliminating the threats these groups pose to ournational security,” said the statement.
“The United States, our interests, and our allies are safer as a result ofhis death.”
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Last week, citing former American officials, The New York Times reportedthat the US launched an airstrike against al-Rimi in Yemen after trackinghim through aerial surveillance and intelligence. Al-Rimi was said to havebeen killed in a January airstrike and these officials were awaitingconfirmation.
The slain leader has become the third major figure the US targeted inrecent months.
The US killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic RevolutionaryGuards Corps’ elite Quds Force, in an airstrike on Jan. 3 in Baghdad, Iraqand in October killed Daesh/ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi inside Syria.
