Al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen announced the death of its leader Khalid al-Batarfi on Sunday.
An al-Qaida video did not give any details about al-Batarfi’s death but showed him wrapped in a funeral shroud and the militant group’s flag, according to the SITE Intelligence group.
The United States had offered a $5 million bounty for al-Batarfi, who had led al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) since February 2020.
The group named Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki, who has a $6 million U.S. bounty, as its new leader.
AQAP has long been seen as al-Qaida’s most dangerous offshoot and has carried out attacks such as the 2015 assault on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.
The leader before al-Batarfi, Qassim al-Rimi, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in response to a 2019 attack at a U.S. Navy site in Florida.
Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters
