SANAA - Key dates in the history of extremist group Al-Qaeda in Yemen, which on Wednesday claimed responsibility for last week's slayings at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris:
1992
- December 12: In the first known Al-Qaeda attack in the country, bombers strike a hotel which formerly housed US Marines in the southern city of Aden. Two non-Americans die.
2000
- October 12: 17 US military personnel killed in an Al-Qaeda suicide attack on the USS destroyer Cole in the port of Aden.
2002
- October 6: The French-owned oil tanker Limburg is damaged by a bomb-laden boat off the Yemeni coast, killing a Bulgarian sailor. Al-Qaeda claims responsibility.
2007
- July 2: Eight Spanish tourists and two local drivers are killed by a car bomb at a historic site in Marib, east Yemen.
2008
- September 17: 19 people die, seven of them assailants, in a double car bomb attack outside the US embassy in Sanaa. None of the casualties are Americans.
2009
- January: Saudi and Yemeni Al-Qaeda branches merge to form the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
- December 25: Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tries to explode a bomb on a US airliner between Amsterdam and Detroit. AQAP claims the attempted bombing three days later.
2010
- November 5: AQAP claims responsibility for a plot to send parcel bombs to the United States. It also claims it put a bomb aboard a UPS cargo plane that crashed two months earlier in the Gulf emirate of Dubai, killing two pilots.
2011
- May 29: Hundreds of suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen seize the southern city of Zinjibar in Abyan province and move on to extend their control to other parts of the region.
- July 26: AQAP chief Nasser al-Wuhayshi reaffirms his group's allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, head of the worldwide Al-Qaeda network since the killing in May of its founder, Osama bin Laden.
- September 30: The US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi, who is linked to Al-Qaeda, is killed in a US air raid in Yemen.
2012
- March 4: 185 government soldiers and 25 Al-Qaeda militants reportedly killed in clashes on Zinjibar's outskirts.
- May-June: Yemen army ousts Al-Qaeda from its Abyan strongholds. More than 560 are killed.
- October 4: The US adds Ansar al-Sharia to its list of terror organisations, saying it is an offshoot of AQAP, which has been on the list since January 2010.
2013
- July 17: AQAP confirms the death in a US drone strike last November of its deputy leader Saeed al-Shehri, a Saudi.
- December 5: AQAP carries out a spectacular assault on the defence ministry in Sanaa, in which 56 are killed. It says its objective was the control room for drones targeting its fighters in Yemen.
2014
- October 10: 47 are killed in an AQAP suicide bombing in Sanaa that targeted supporters of Shiite rebels who overran the capital in September.
2015
- January 14: AQAP claims responsibility for the attack a week earlier on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo which killed 12, saying it was "vengeance" for the weekly's cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
AFP
