Al-Qaeda in Yemen confirms leader's death

WASHINGTON - A CIA drone strike has killed the leader of al-Qaeda's feared affiliate in Yemen, a group that has repeatedly sought to launch ambitious attacks on or over American soil, al-Qaeda confirmed Tuesday.

Nasir Abdel-Karim al-Wahishi had evaded U.S. drones and counterterrorism raids in Yemen for years while leading what many analysts consider to be the terrorist network's most dangerous and active chapter, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Under Wahishi's leadership, AQAP, as the group is known, repeatedly attempted to smuggle sophisticated bombs onto passenger jets and cargo planes headed for the United States. The group specialized in bombs designed to be hidden in body cavities or smuggled through airport security.

American officials had been working to verify reports from Yemen that Wahishi was killed in a U.S. drone strike in the southern port city of Mukalla on Friday.

There is "no reason to doubt that claim," a counterterrorism official said Monday.

A senior AQAP operative read a statement confirming the death in a video released early Tuesday. Wahishi, who once served as Osama bin Laden's personal secretary, already has been replaced by his deputy, Qassim Raimi, the operative said.

Wahishi's death is a major victory for the United States. Wahishi, one of the world's most-wanted militants, was a close ally of bin Laden, al-Qaeda's founder.

After bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011, his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, named Wahishi as his deputy, and U.S. officials considered him a major contender to lead al-Qaeda someday.

Confirmation of his death came two days after U.S. warplanes launched an airstrike in eastern Libya that targeted Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an al-Qaeda-linked militant who pioneered lucrative kidnap-for-ransom schemes in North Africa and who led a brazen 2013 attack on an Algerian gas plant that left 38 foreign hostages dead.

The strikes against two elusive and powerful al-Qaeda leaders in a matter of days signal an increasing tempo of U.S. counterterrorism operations against groups that have specifically targeted Americans.