Leading al-Qaeda operative said killed in Yemen

A top Al-Qaeda terrorist was killed in Yemen on Tuesday, Al Arabiya reported.

Said Ali al-Shihri, a Saudi national, was considered the radical Islamist organization’s No. 2 in the area. He was previously wounded in a raid by the local army and American forces.

It was not clear how he died.

Shahri spent six years in the US’s imprisonment facility at Guantanamo Bay after being caught by American troops in Afghanistan. He was released in 2007 and transferred to Saudi Arabia, where he was supposed to undergo “rehabilitation” and sever his connection to the radical Islamist terror group.

A month after leaving the center in Saudi Arabia, Shihri reportedly left for Yemen where he established a new extremist organization with ties to al-Qaeda.

In September 2012 there were rumors that Shihri was killed in a drone attack, but those reports were later proved false. Two months later he was wounded in a Yemeni army raid against al-Qaeda targets and facilities, which was conducted with the help of American forces, his family told Al Arabiya.

In 2011, the uprisings across the Arab world reached Yemen, where al-Qaeda’s operatives seized a number of towns before being driven by the army to the mountainous areas nearby.