The United States announced on Thursday, February 6, "Eliminated" Yemeni Qassem al-Rimi, head of the Al-Qaida group on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a jihadist group claimed to have been the perpetrators of anti-Western attacks.
"On the instructions of President Donald Trump, the United States carried out an anti-terrorist operation in Yemen and succeeded in eliminating Qassem al-Rimi, a founder and the leader of the Al-Qaida group in the Arabian peninsula (AQPA) ", the White House released in a statement.
Under the leadership of al-Rimi, AQPA has perpetrated "Unspeakable violence against civilians in Yemen and sought to perpetrate and inspire numerous attacks against the United States and our forces", added the text.
The death of Qassem al-Rimi "Further weakens AQAP and the global Al-Qaida movement and this brings us closer to eliminating the threats these groups pose to our national security", also justified the White House.
According to the US executive, al-Rimi joined Al-Qaida in the 1990s, working in Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden, responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. AQAP took advantage of the weakening of central power in Yemen to strengthen its grip in the south and southeast of the country, ravaged by war since March 2015.
Intensification of the American strikes
The AQAP group had claimed responsibility for the shooting perpetrated at the beginning of December at an American military base in Pensacola, in Florida, having killed three sailors, according to a statement on Sunday from the American center for monitoring Islamist sites SITE.
The group was also subject to sanctions from the United States Treasury and the United Nations for its participation in a deadly attack near the United States embassy in Sanaa and for its supposed support for the young Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who, on the day of Christmas 2009, tried to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit flight by hiding explosives in his underpants.
The United States has intensified its drone strikes targeting Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula since the arrival of Donald Trump's White House. The President has also authorized other strikes in the Middle East, such as the one that killed the powerful Iranian general Ghassem Soleimani, a commander of the Revolutionary Guards, in Baghdad in early January.
The Chérif brothers and Saïd Kouachi, perpetrators of the attack on January 7, 2015 at the headquarters of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, claimed to be from Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
