Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) announced on Friday morning the death of one of its commanders, Salih bin Salim bin Ubayd ’Abolan, better known as Abu Omar al-Hadhrami in a US airstrike in Yemen. The terror group did not give a date for al-Hadhrami's death.
The most recent reported US airstrike in Yemen was on November 14, 2021, that reportedly killed three members of the terrorist group.
"Missiles fired by a US drone struck a traveling vehicle passing on road between the provinces of al-Bayda and Shabwa in the country's southern part," a Yemeni military official to China's Xinhua News Agency. The report was not carried by US press.
A 2011 report by Long War Journal, a blog affiliated with the right-wing Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also referred to a figure named Omar al-Hadhrami, who was affiliated with Abdu Ali Sharqawi, a Yemeni al-Qaeda associate, and who headed al-Qaeda's efforts in Lahore, Pakistan.
The US has waged a drone war against AQAP, which is based in Yemen, since its first strike in November 2002, which killed six operatives believed to be connected to the suicide bombing of the US Navy destroyer USS Cole in Aden in 2000. The group persisted, and after the Saudi-led coalition launched a brutal war against the Yemeni Houthi movement in 2015, AQAP made a resurgence. Weapons sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, another coalition member, were subsequently spotted in the hands of AQAP and other militias on the ground in Yemen.
*Al-Qaeda - a terrorist group banned in many countries
** The Taliban - an entity sanctioned by the United Nations