SANAA, Yemen: The Yemen-based branch of al-Qaida confirmed on Wednesday that the group’s No. 2 figure, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, was killed in a U.S. drone strike.

The announcement, posted on militant websites, gave no date for the death of Saudi-born Saeed al-Shihri.

The confirmation was significant, however, because al-Shihri had twice before been reported dead but the terror group later denied those reports.

His killing is considered a major blow to the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch, known as Al-Qaida in The Arabian Peninsula.

Yemeni security officials said al-Shihri died of serious injuries sustained when a drone strike targeted him in November last year.

Al-Shihri had survived an earlier drone attack, in September 2012, the officials added, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media.

Wednesday’s announcement came in a video purporting to show the group’s chief theologian, Ibrahim al-Robaish, eulogizing al-Shihri.

In the video, al-Robaish said al-Shihri was hit by the drone while speaking on his mobile telephone in the province of Saadah, north of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa.

The authenticity of the video, which was first reported by the U.S. monitoring service SITE, could not be independently confirmed but it appeared on militant websites commonly used by al-Qaida.

Al-Shihri, also known as Abu Sufyan al-Azdi, fought in Afghanistan and spent six years in Guantanamo. He was returned to Saudi Arabia in late 2007 and later fled to Yemen to join the al-Qaida branch there.

In one of his last videos, which appeared on the Internet in April, al-Shihri harshly criticized Yemen’s neighbor to the north, Saudi Arabia, for its policy of allowing the United States to launch deadly drone strikes from bases in the kingdom.

Washington considers the Yemen-based al-Qaida to be the most dangerous offshoot of the terror network after it was linked to several attempted attacks on U.S. targets, including the foiled Christmas Day 2009 bombing of an airliner over Detroit and explosives-laden parcels intercepted the following year aboard cargo flights.

The group made major territorial gains in Yemen last year, following the uprising that forced the country’s longtime leader Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down after more than 30 years in power. Al-Qaida militants and their allies seized several towns and cities in the south of the country before they were pushed back in a months-long, U.S.-aided military campaign by government forces last year.

Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, in office since last year, has worked closely with the U.S. in pushing the group back.

An offensive by Yemeni troops backed by U.S. airpower and advisers drove militants out of the southern cities and into mountain hideouts. Airstrikes, believed to be by U.S. drones, have killed a number of key al-Qaida operatives.

Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan officials released harrowing new details on Thursday about an attack in a western province where assailants shot everyone in their path, sending terrified people jumping from windows trying to escape the assailants who killed at least 46 civilians and security forces.

Civilians have frequently been caught up in the fighting between militants and Afghan and U.S.-led combat forces, but the U.N.condemned Wednesday’s attack, saying civilians were deliberately targeted at the courthouse and other government offices in Farah province. Two judges, six prosecutors, administration officers and cleaners working at the site were among the dead, the U.N. said.

Also Thursday, NATO reported that an American F-16 fighter jet had crashed in eastern Afghanistan, killing the U.S. pilot. The U.S.-led military coalition did not release further details about Wednesday’s crash.

“While the cause of the crash is under investigation, initial reporting indicates there was no insurgent activity in the area at the time of the crash,” the coalition said in a statement.

Illustrating other dangers, an airstrike by U.S.-led forces mistakenly killed four policemen and two brothers as their car was being searched at a checkpoint in eastern Afghanistan, an Afghan official said Thursday.

The strike occurred in the Deh Yak district of Ghazni province, according to district chief Fazel Ahmad Toolwak. He said NATO troops were fighting Taliban militants about 10 kilometers (six miles) away, but those killed in the strike were not involved in that battle.

A NATO spokesman, U.S. Army Maj. Adam Wojack, said the international military coalition was looking into the report, adding it “takes all allegations of this type seriously.”

According to a recent U.N. report, 2,754 Afghan civilians were killed last year — down 12 percent from 3,131 killed in 2011. But the number killed in the second half of last year rose, suggesting that Afghanistan is likely to face continued violence as the Taliban and other militants fight for control of the country as foreign forces continue their withdrawal.

The U.N. said the Taliban and other insurgents were responsible for 81 percent of the civilian deaths and injuries last year, while 8 percent were attributed to pro-government forces. The remaining civilian deaths and injuries could not be attributed to either side.

The number of casualties blamed on U.S. and allied forces decreased by 46 percent, with 316 killed and 271 wounded last year. Most were killed in U.S. and NATO airstrikes, although that number, too, dropped by nearly half last year to 126, including 51 children.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in Farah, the capital of the province of the same name near the border with Iran.

The hospital in Farah was so overwhelmed with casualties that helicopters had to ferry some of the wounded to other hospitals in nearby areas.

Provincial Gov. Akram Akhpelwak said two more people had died from the attack, raising the death toll to 55 — 36 civilians, 10 Afghan security forces and nine attackers. More than 100 people also were wounded, he said.

One of the province’s members of parliament, Humaira Ayobi, said one elderly man was found hiding in a bathroom, afraid to come out.

“Farah is a city of sadness,” she said in a telephone call after attending a funeral for some of the victims. “The stores are closed. There’s no traffic in the streets.”

The attack began when two suicide bombers detonated an explosives-laden vehicle near the courthouse, shattering windows and devastating several buildings. Seven others jumped out of the pickup and ran toward the courthouse and attorney general’s office, prompting an eight-hour gunbattle that left many buildings pockmarked from bullets and rocket-propelled grenades.

Ayobi said the attackers went from room to room shooting people, including nearly two dozen people who had taken refuge in a basement. She also said two judges were singled out to be killed in a separate room, and that their bodies were burned.

The attackers were wearing military-style uniforms easily bought in Afghan markets and had painted a pickup in camouflage to disguise it as an Afghan National Army vehicle so it could bypass checkpoints, she said.

An Associated Press photo shows a group of soldiers standing over the body of one of the slain attackers who was lying in a pool of blood and wearing a uniform nearly identical to theirs.

Local officials said Wednesday that they believed the attackers were trying to free 15 Taliban prisoners who were about to stand trial. But Ayobi said the initial target might have been the governor’s compound until heavy security there forced the attackers to redirect themselves to the courthouse.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council condemned the attack “in the strongest terms” and called for the perpetrators, organizers and financiers to be brought to justice. The council reiterated its “serious concern at the threats posed by the Taliban, Al-Qaida and illegal armed groups to the local population, national security forces, international military and international assistance efforts in Afghanistan.”

PARIS: The death of a top al-Qaida-linked warlord in combat with French-led troops represents a victory in the battle against jihadists who had a stranglehold on northern Mali. But it is far from the defining blow against a wily enemy that can go underground and regroup to renew itself. Even the fearsome Abou Zeid is replaceable.

A top commander of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, Abou Zeid had been in the crosshairs of the French military and their African partners since they moved in to Mali on Jan. 11 to rout radicals seen as a threat to northwest Africa and to Europe. An announcement Saturday by the French president’s office that Abou Zeid’s death in late February has been “definitively confirmed” ends weeks of speculation about his fate.

Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, an Algerian thought to be 47, was a pillar of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb’s southern realm, responsible for the death of at least two European hostages and a leader of the extremist takeover of northern Mali, which followed a coup d’etat a year ago. He joined a succession of radical insurgency movements in Algeria starting in the early 1990s and became known for his brutality and involvement in high-profile hostage-taking.

President Francois Hollande’s office said the death of Abou Zeid “marks an important step in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel,” the borderlands where the Sahara meets the sub-Saharan jungle, encompassing several nations where radicals are on the rise.

French officials have maintained for weeks that the Abou Zeid was “probably” dead but waited to conduct DNA tests to verify.

But jihadists have shown again and again that they can overcome the death of individual warlords. Even French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has said that eliminating leaders “doesn’t solve everything.”

“It’s the entire structure that has to be put down and not this or that leader,” he said in an interview with Le Monde earlier this month.

Al-Qaida rebounded after commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan were killed. Leaders of jihadist movements in Algeria that gave birth to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, known as AQIM, were killed and seamlessly replaced. The top AQIM leader in Mali, with the title Emir of the Grand Sahara, Nabil Makloufi, was quickly replaced after being killed last fall in a road accident, according to Matthieu Guidere, an expert on radical Islam who monitors AQIM and other jihadist movements. The new top emir, Yahya El-Hammam, could now step into Abou Zeid’s warlord role, according to one scenario.

Abou Zeid was killed in operations in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains in Mali’s far north, the French statement said. The area where mountains meet the desert was Abou Zeid’s stronghold — and thought to be where he was keeping four French hostages captured two years ago at a uranium mine in Niger. Their fate is unclear.

The French military says the French-led forces have killed hundreds of extremist fighters in the two-month campaign in Mali, and French officials say they have cornered the al-Qaida-linked groups in a patch of northern mountains.

However, even a clear military success by the French and their African partners in Mali would not guarantee that AQIM will die.

While based in northern Algeria, it has proven extremely mobile, latching on to political instability in the region and arming itself with weapons from Libya. AQIM has seeded ties with other radical Islamic movements like the violent Boko Haram in Nigeria. Last week, AQIM put out a call to jihadists throughout northern Africa to join the fronts in Mali and Algeria — or to stay home, and wage a war of preaching in countries like Tunisia or Morocco to turn the tide against “secularists,” according to the SITE Intel Group which monitors jihadist statements.

Interviews with a series of experts on AQIM and other jihadist groups all suggest that a military victory is not the definitive answer to snuffing out jihadist terror, which can change form, move on to new theaters of operation or reignite if the instability it breeds on is not eliminated, too.

The brazen assault suggests possible coordination between the terror network’s Iraq affiliate and its ideological allies in Syria who are fighting on the side of the rebels against President Bashar Assad’s regime.

The Syrian troops had sought refuge in northern Iraq during recent clashes that ended with the rebels taking over a border crossing along Iraq’s northern province of Ninevah. The troops were being escorted back to Syria through another border crossing, further south, in Iraq’s western Anbar province, when they were ambushed.

In a statement posted on militant websites Monday, the Islamic State of Iraq said its fighters were monitoring the movements of the soldiers as Iraqi authorities worked to transfer them secretly back across the border.

“The lions of the desert and the men of the impossible missions set up traps along the road that leads to the border exits,” said the statement.

The attack started with militants detonating explosive charges on military escort vehicles assigned to protect trucks carrying the Syrian soldiers, the group said.

After that, “the fighters launched an attack from two directions using light and medium range weapons as well as rocket propelled grenades,” said al-Qaida in Iraq. “Within less than half an hour the whole convoy … was annihilated.”

The account of the attack matches descriptions provided to The Associated Press by Iraqi officials in the immediate aftermath of the assault.

Syria’s conflict began with anti-regime protests in March 2011 and later spiraled into civil war. The U.N. says more than 70,000 people have been killed so far.

SANAA, Yemen:  Al-Qaida’s No. 2 in Yemen died of wounds sustained in a U.S. drone attack last year in southern Yemen, the country’s official news agency and a security official said Thursday.
Saeed al-Shihri, a Saudi national who fought in Afghanistan and spent six years in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, was wounded in a missile attack in the southern city of Saada on Oct. 28, according to SABA news agency.
The agency said that he had fallen into a coma since then. It was not clear when he actually died.
A security official said that the missile had been fired by a U.S. -operated, unmanned drone aircraft. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Yemen had previously announced al-Shihri’s death in a Sept. 10 drone attack in the province of Hadramawt. A subsequent DNA test however proved that the body recovered was not that of al-Shihri.
On Oct. 22, al-Shihri denied his own death in audio message posted on Jihadi websites.
Also known by the nom de guerre Abu Sufyan al-Azdi, he denounced at the time the Yemeni government for spreading the “rumor about my death … as though the killing of the mujahideen (holy warriors) by America is a victory to Islam and Muslims.”
Al-Shihri went through Saudi Arabia’s famous “rehabilitation” institutes after he returned to his home country, but then he fled to Yemen and became deputy to Nasser al-Wahishi, the leader of an al-Qaida group.
Al-Shihri’s death is considered a major blow to al-Qaida’s Yemen branch, known as al-Qaida in The Arabian Peninsula. Washington considers it the most dangerous of the group’s offshoots.
Al-Qaida in Yemen has been linked to several attempted attacks on U.S. targets, including the foiled Christmas Day 2009 bombing of an airliner over Detroit and explosives-laden parcels intercepted aboard cargo flights last year.
In 2011, a high-profile U.S. drone strike killed U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki, who had been linked to the planning and execution of several attacks targeting U.S. and Western interests, including the attempt to down a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009 and the plot to bomb cargo planes in 2010.
Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest nation, has fallen into lawlessness during a yearlong uprising starting in 2011, when millions of Yemenis took to the streets demanding the ouster of their longtime authoritarian ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Al-Qaida militants exploited the unrest and took control of large swaths of land in the south until last spring, when the military, backed by the U.S., managed to drive hundreds of militants out of major cities and towns.
Since then, the group has carried out deadly attacks targeting mostly security and military officials, including suicide bombings that targeted military and security compounds.