Senior Al Qaida leader killed in Al Bayda province

Asenior leader of Yemen’s Al Qaida branch was killed yesterday in a raid by a US drone strike in central Yemen, an official of the exiled government of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi said.

The official said Abdullah Al Sanaani, a regional commander in Al Qaida in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), was killed along with his bodyguard while travelling in a vehicle in the Al Sawma’a district of Al Bayda province.

“He was killed, along with an escort, and the vehicle was completely burned,” the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. The United States has been using drones to target Al Qaida in Yemen. The group claimed responsibility for an attack last year on the Paris office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Meanwhile, Al Houthi rebels alleged that an American detained in the capital this week was a spy. Masked gunmen wearing the uniform of the rebels’ national security service seized Peter Willems on Tuesday from the principal’s office of the Exceed Language Centre he heads.

Students described scenes of panic as he was hauled off without any immediate explanation.

“Here is the American spy, ” a member of the rebels’ Revolutionary Committee, Nayef Al Qanes, tweeted alongside a photograph of the detained school head.

Willems is not the first American to be detained by the rebels. In April, a US citizen was flown out of Sana’a to Muscat after successful negotiations for his release by Oman. Last November, Oman evacuated three Americans who had been detained for spying by the rebels.

And in September last year, Oman helped negotiate the release of a Briton, two Americans and three Saudis.