Al Qaeda confirms death of top commander, appoints successor

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) confirmed the death of its leader, Qassim al-Rimi. Earlier this month, US president Donald Trump said that US forces have killed al-Rimi in an operation inside Yemen, but Al-Qaeda had not confirmed his death.
Al-Rimi was the emir of the AQAP, a branch of the global terrorist group. He was involved in a large number of deadly terror attacks in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, as well as a series of sophisticated airline bomb plots targeting the US.
He joined AQAP in the 1990s and worked under Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. He became AQAP’s leader in 2015. Some experts considered him to be a possible successor to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al Qaeda’s overall.
Al-Rimi’s death has been confirmed by AQAP religious official Hamid bin Hamoud al-Tamimi, a jihadist monitoring agency said, adding that AQAP had already appointed his successor.
On 31 January media reported that US officials “expressed confidence” that Rimi was killed on 29 January in the Yakla area of Al Bayda Governorate, Yemen.
“His death further degrades AQAP and the global al-Qaeda movement, and it brings us closer to eliminating the threats these groups pose to our national security. The United States, our interests, and our allies are safer as a result of his death”, the White House later said.