Dubai (AFP) – Al-Qaeda said Thursday that Harith al-Nadhari, a senior figure who threatened more attacks on France after last month’s Charlie Hebdo killings, had died in a US drone strike in Yemen.
Nadhari and three other militants were killed in a January 31 “crusader American drone strike against their car” in the southern Shabwa province, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said on Twitter.
AQAP named the others as Said Bafaraj, Abdelsamie al-Haddaa and Azzam al-Hadrami.
Tribal sources had said at the time that four suspected militants were left charred in their car after a drone strike.
Nadhari was considered to be one of AQAP’s senior religious scholars tasked with promoting sharia, Islamic law.
He had urgedmore attacks on France such as those on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris that killed 17 people.
“It is better for you to stop your aggression against the Muslims, so perhaps you will live safely,” Nadhari was quoted saying in a January 10 video after the attacks.
Four days later, AQAP ideologue Nasser bin Ali al-Ansiclaimed the Charlie Hebdo assault on behalf of the group.
Despite an ongoing political crisis in Yemen, US PresidentBarack Obama vowed on January 25 not to let up in Washington’s campaign against jihadists there.
A US drone killed one of Al-Qaeda's top militants in Yemen (AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele)
He ruled out deploying troops, but said Washington would continue “to go after high value targets inside Yemen”.
At least 11 suspected Al-Qaeda militants have been killed in drone strikes in central and southern Yemen since then.
Western governments say it is unclear if AQAP directly orchestrated the Charlie Hebdo attack, although they do believe one or both of the perpetrators, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, spent time with jihadists in Yemen.
AQAP was formed in 2009 after a merger between militants in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
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