President Trump appeared to confirm reports that a US drone killed the leader of al Qaeda’s Yemen branch by posting — without comment — a series of retweets Saturday.
Qassim al-Rimi, head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was the target of a January airstrike in Yemen, soon after another US strike killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, CNN reported Friday.
Al-Rimi, a veteran terror chief, was implicated in the 2008 attack on the American embassy in Sana, Yemen that killed 14, as well as in an “underwear bombing” plot in 2009, according to the New York Times.
He was the target of the first military operation Trump ordered as president, a January 2017 raid that left a Navy SEAL dead.
“The fool of the White House got slapped at the beginning of his road in your lands,” al-Rimi scoffed at the time.
Military and national security officials refused to comment on media reports on al-Rimi’s possible death.
But Trump retweeted posts from an independent intelligence analyst that said a targeted US attack on Jan. 25 took out the elusive terrorist.
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