US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that the US at his direction had conducted a counterterrorism operation in Yemen that killed Qassim al-Rimi, an al-Qaeda leader who claimed responsibility for last year’s deadly shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida, where a Saudi Arabian aviation trainee killed three US sailors.
Al-Rimi is a founder of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The affiliate has long been considered the global network’s most dangerous branch for its attempts to carry out attacks on the US mainland.
The US and its allies are safer as a result of his death, Trump said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“We will continue to protect the American people by tracking down and eliminating terrorists who seek to do us harm,” Trump said.
While Trump confirmed reports that al-Rimi had been killed, he did not say when the US operation was conducted or offer any details about how it was carried out.
Al-Rimi had said in an 18-minute video that his group was responsible for the Dec. 6 shooting at the base.
Al-Rimi called the shooter, Royal Saudi Air Force second lieutenant Mohammed Alshamrani, a “courageous knight” and a “hero.”
The shooter opened fire inside a classroom at the base, killing three people and wounding two sheriff’s deputies before one of the deputies killed him. Eight others were also hurt.
The shooting focused public attention on the presence of foreign students in US military training programs and exposed shortcomings in the screening of cadets.
The US last month sent home 21 Saudi Arabian military students, saying that the trainees had posted jihadist or anti-US sentiments on social media pages or had “contact with child pornography,” including in Internet chat rooms.
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