The United States confirmed that an operation in Yemen had killed the leader of the most dangerous arm of the Al Qaeda; al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). According to President Trump Qassim Al Rimi, a founder and the leader of AQAP had been killed in a US operation in Yemen.
The death of Al Rimi was announced shortly after AQAP claimed responsibility of a December 6 shooting at US Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida, in which a Saudi Air Force officer killed three American sailors.
Al-Rimi was among the top-level deputies in the global al Qaeda network and was a close confidant of the group’s emir Ayman al-Zawahiri. The drone strike that killed al Rimi was reported to have been carried out in late January despite the White House not releasing any details about the operation that took out the powerful terrorist.
Rimi, a Yemeni national, reportedly served as a top lieutenant in Afghanistan to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. raid in Pakistan in 2011. Rimi later went on to co-found AQAP, a merging of al-Qaida’s Yemeni and Saudi branches that has long been considered the most dangerous branch of the al-Qaida network. He assumed the leadership of the organization after the 2015 killing of Nasir al-Wuhayshi in a U.S. drone strike.
