Yemen says it captured senior al-Qaida leader

Man with knife arrested trying to enter Tunisian Parliament

ADEN/TUNIS (Reuters) – Yemeni troops captured a senior leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula during an early morning raid on Tuesday in the southeastern Hadramawt region, a local security official said.

Special Forces stormed the house in a remote village where Abu Ali al-Sayari, a Saudi national of Yemeni origin, was hiding, the official said. They detained three others and killed two more.

Al-Qaida terrorists took advantage of Yemen’s civil war, which began in 2015, seizing parts of the country’s south before government soldiers and troops from a Saudi-led Arab coalition drove them out of major population centers.

They now control much less territory, but continue to launch occasional attacks on state officials and institutions.

The United States now regards the jihadist faction as one of the deadliest branches of the network founded by Osama bin Laden. In the past it plotted to down US airliners and claimed responsibility for the 2015 attacks on the office of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.

Also on Tuesday, a young man trying to enter the Tunisian Parliament was arrested when a scanner at the entrance detected that he had a knife, officials said.

A parliamentary official told Reuters it was not immediately clear why the man was attempting to enter the building. A member of parliament told local media that the man was among a group of students who had come to watch a parliamentary session.

Security at the parliament building in Tunis has been tightened since gunmen stormed the neighboring Bardo Museum two years ago and killed 21 foreign tourists.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.