(Previous Incident Code: YEM180 )

Sheikh Harith al Nadhari, from a AQAP propaganda, posted on January 23 2015 on Jihadology – an academic clearing house for Jihadist material

US drones killed a senior AQAP figure along with three other members of the group. Al Qaeda confirmed their deaths in a release a week after the strike. It was the second strike in a week to target a vehicle in southern Yemen.

The attack killed Sheikh Harith al Nadhari (right), a spokesman and ideologue who released a statement praising the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. AQAP named the other three dead as Said Bafaraj, Abdelsamie al Haddaa and Azzam al Hadrami.

There was some debate about the significance of Nadhari’s death. He was described as a central figure in the group’s leadership and an important ideologue. However some said his death would not have major ramifications on the group’s continued survival or prosperity.

Said Bafaraj was born in Hadramout in 1982 (from AQAP eulogy)

AQAP published a eulogy to Said Bafaraj (aka Obwalulad Hadrami). It said he was born in Hadramout in 1982 and studied both theology and science as a student in 1999. That year he tried to move to Chechnya to fight against the Russians.

In 2001 he joined the Al Faruq camp in Afghanistan where he trained as a fighter. After the US invasion of Afghanistan, he traveled first to Khost province in eastern Afghanistan, and from there to Pakistan. He returned to Yemen and joined AQAP when it formed in 2007.

There were reports a drone crashed in central Dhamar province of the country. It reportedly came down at 8pm local time in a sparsely populated area “between the villages of Makhdara and Resaba“. The security chief for the province of Dhamar, Abdullah al Sadi, confirmed to the Yemen Times the crashed aircraft was a US drone.

The strike came during an ongoing political crisis in Yemen. On January 22 the president, prime minister and cabinet resigned after the presidential palace was attacked by armed Houthi rebels.

The president resigned in the face of a armed group occupying his capital city. The same day as this strike, he refused to reconsider his resignation despite the Houthis trying to compel to do so, “at gun point“, according to the former president.

Aside from robbing it of an eloquent spox, al-Nathari’s death unlikely to have big effect on AQAP–conditions still ripe for AQAP’s growth. — Adam Baron (@adammbaron) February 5, 2015