The leader of Yemen’s branch of Al-Qaeda is dead, the militant group announced late Sunday, without giving details.
Khalid Al-Batarfi had a $5 million bounty on his head from the US government over leading the group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In the announcement, the group said Saad bin Atef Al-Awlaki would take over as its leader. The US has a $6 million bounty on him, saying Al-Awlaki “has publicly called for attacks against the United States and its allies.”
Al-Qaeda released a video showing Al-Batarfi wrapped in a funeral shroud of the Al-Qaeda black-and-white flag. It offered no details on the cause of his death and there was no clear sign of trauma visible on his face. Al-Batarfi is believed to be in his early 40s.
Al-Batarfi took over as the head of the branch, known by the acronym AQAP, in February 2020. He succeeded leader Qassim Al-Rimi, who was killed by a US drone strike ordered by then-President Donald Trump. Al-Rimi had claimed responsibility for the 2019 attack at the US Naval Air Station Pensacola in which a Saudi aviation trainee killed three American sailors.
Al-Batarfi, born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, traveled to Afghanistan in 1999 and fought alongside the Taliban during the US-led invasion. He joined AQAP in 2010 and led forces in taking over Yemen’s Abyan province, according to the US
In 2015, he was freed after an AQAP raid that saw the militants capture Mukalla, the capital of Yemen’s largest province, Hadramawt, amid the chaos that followed Yemen’s Houthi rebels seizing the capital, Sanaa, and as a Saudi-led coalition started a war against the Houthis. A photo at the time showed Al-Awlaki with a Kalashnikov rifle, posing inside a government palace there.
AQAP was later pushed out of Mukalla, but has continued attacks and been the target of a US drone strike campaign since the administration of then-President George W. Bush.
In 2020, there had been claims that Al-Bartafi had been detained, which later were denied. In 2021, he referred to the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol as “only the tip of the iceberg of what will come to them, God willing.”