Qaeda’s No. 3 man killed with family
Al Qaeda announced on Monday that its No 3 official, Mustafa al-Yazid, had been killed along with members of his family — perhaps one of the most severe blows to the terror movement since the US campaign against Al Qaeda began. A US official said Al Yazid was believed to have died in a US missile strike.
A statement posted on an Al Qaeda website said Al Yazid, which it described as the organisation’s top commander in Afghanistan, was killed along with his wife, three daughters, a grandchild and other men, women and children but did not say how or where.
The statement did not give an exact date for Al Yazid’s death, but it was dated by the Islamic calendar month of “Jemadi al-Akhar,” which falls in May.
A US official in Washington said word was “spreading in extremist circles” of his death in Pakistan’s tribal areas in the past two weeks.
His death would be a major blow to Al Qaeda, which in December “lost both its internal and external operations chiefs,” the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. The Egyptian-born Al Yazid, also known as Sheik Saeed al-Masri, was a founding member of Al Qaeda and the group’s prime conduit to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri. He was key to day-to-day control, with a hand in everything from finances to operational planning, the US official said.
Al Yazid has been reported killed before, in 2008, but this is the first time his death has been acknowledged by the militant group.
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