ADEN: Five suspected Al Qaeda members, including a commander with Chechen links, and two soldiers were killed yesterday in an army offensive against jihadists in the south, official sources said.
The defence ministry named the foreigner as Abu Islam al-Shishani, the second foreign jihadist reported killed this week.
“Four Al Qaeda fighters were killed and nine wounded” in clashes with soldiers in Abyan province, a military source on the ground said.
During fighting in the Sanaj region between Maajala and Wadi Dheiqa, an Al Qaeda bastion, “two soldiers were killed and four more wounded”, the source said.
The defence ministry said Shishani was killed in Maajala.
The deaths come as the military presses its latest offensive against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
AQAP, regarded by the United States as the global jihadist network’s most dangerous franchise, has been the target of an intensifying drone war this year that has killed dozens.
News of Shishani’s death came as officials blamed AQAP for a suicide bombing at an intelligence post that wounded two guards, and after gunmen killed an army officer in Aden.
