By MARGARET COKER And CHIP CUMMINS
The al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen issued fresh threats against the U.S. and its Mideast allies, promising to retaliate against a surge of strikes launched in the past month against its leaders and havens.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula also denied statements made by Yemeni authorities late last week that six of al Qaeda's senior leaders in the country, including the man identified as the leader of the group's military operations, had been killed in an airstrike.
"The Yemeni government has been making many false claims … against the mujahedeen leaders in the Arabian Peninsula. The latest of these claims is that it killed six of them," the group said, according to a statement posted on Islamist Web sites. "We assure our Muslim nation that none of the mujahedeen were killed in that unjust and insidious raid; rather, some brothers were slightly wounded."
The al Qaeda statement couldn't be independently verified. Yemeni opposition news outlets also cited local tribal leaders as saying they had seen the al Qaeda figures alive after the airstrike on Friday. One news story from the online site Mareb Press quoted a tribal leader as saying he saw al Qaeda's military-operations chief, Qassim al Raimi, with slight wounds but well enough to be eating lunch on Saturday.
Yemen is under renewed international pressure to go after al Qaeda cells, after al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the failed Christmas Day airline bombing in the U.S. The alleged bomber, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has told investigators he picked up his explosive device in Yemen.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh launched the most recent crackdown before the Christmas bombing attempt, following heightened worry among Western officials over al Qaeda's resurgence in Yemen. Since late December, Yemeni officials have deployed army troops to areas known to harbor al Qaeda, and U.S.- and U.K.-trained counterterrorism units have launched a series of raids on al Qaeda positions. Yemen has announced an almost-daily tally of killed or captured alleged al Qaeda operatives.
In its statement issued Monday, al Qaeda warned that it was ready to retaliate against that surge, and urged other Yemenis to help it fight "the infidels and their agent helpers."
"The duty of our Muslim nation is to declare jihad against the infidels and their agent helpers, not only on the ground, but in the sea and air as well as their Crusader warships in the Gulf of Aden," according to the statement. "As they declared it to be an open war on the people of Islam, we must declare an open war against [them]."
The Yemeni airstrike Friday was immediately hailed by officials in San'a, the capital, as a significant blow to al Qaeda.
A statement published by the Interior Ministry said security forces hit a convoy of vehicles carrying six of the top leaders of the terrorist group as they were traveling between Saada and al Jouf provinces.
Past Yemeni claims of significant military success against al Qaeda haven't always proved correct. Yemeni officials hailed two raids against al Qaeda in December as major successes, but later said most of the group's senior leadership, including Mr. Raimi, had escaped unharmed.
Mr. Raimi was sentenced to five years in prison in 2004 for plotting to attack a number of embassies in San'a. In 2006, he escaped from prison, along with nearly two dozen others, including several men who later became key al Qaeda operatives.
Troubles in Yemen have complicated plans by the Obama administration to shut down the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, where Yemeni men make up nearly half of the 200 remaining detainees.
—Summer Said in Cairo contributed to this article.