A report Thursday said that a top Al-Qaeda terrorist, Ayad al-Shabwani, was killed in fighting with the army. Shabwani was one of the leaders of the Al-Qaeda offshoot in Yemen, AQAP. He was reportedly killed Tuesday in a battle that extended into Wednesday near Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province, east of the main southern city Aden.

Yemen had claimed in January that Shabwani was killed, a report that AQAP had denied later.