Al Qaeda leader killed in U.S. bombing in Yemen

Al Qaeda in Yemen said its leader Nasser al-Wuhayshi was killed in a U.S. bombing, in a statement posted online.

"We in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula mourn to our Muslim nation ... that Abu Baseer Nasser bin Abdul Karim al-Wuhayshi, God rest his soul, passed away in an American strike which targeted him along with two of his mujahideen brothers, may God rest their souls," Khaled Batarfi, a senior member of the group, said.

The group had met and appointed its former military chief Qassim al-Raymi as his replacement, he added.

al-Qaeda is a global militant Islamist organization founded by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and several other militants, at some point between August 1988 and late 1989, with origins traceable to the Soviet war in Afghanistan. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and an Islamist, extremist, wahhabi, jihadist group.