linked imam may be deadSANA'A - A Yemeni air raid may have killed the top two leaders of Al-Qaeda's regional branch Thursday, and an American Muslim preacher linked to the man who shot dead 13 people at a US army base may also have died, a Yemeni security official said. Nasser Al-Wahayshi, the Yemeni leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and his deputy, Saeed Al-Shehri, were believed to be among 34 militants killed in the dawn operation in the eastern province of Shabwa, said the official, who asked not to be identified. US-born cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki may also have died in the air raid which targeted a meeting of militants planning attacks on Yemeni and foreign oil and economic targets, he said. If all the deaths are confirmed, the airstrike would appear to have struck a severe blow against AQAP, seen as the most dangerous regional offshoot of Osama Bin Laden's network. “Anwar Al-Awlaki is suspected to be dead,” the official said of the cleric who was on the run in Yemen, where he was on the government's most-wanted list of terrorist suspects. According to US officials, the US army psychiatrist who ran amok at the Fort Hood army base in Texas on Nov. 5 had contacts with Awlaki. The Yemeni official said one leading figure in AQAP, Mohammed Saleh Omair, was confirmed dead in Thursday's raid. The Yemeni official mentioned only one airstrike, which a government website said had taken place at 5 A.M., but Al-Arabiya television reported four raids. Al-Qaeda's wing in Yemen announced in January it had changed its name to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Wahayshi, the new group's Yemeni leader, threatened attacks against Westerners in the oil-exporting region. “(The) Interior Ministry has ordered its bodies and offices in all governorates to raise security alert and tighten defense procedures at the important facilities and vital interests all over the country in anticipation of any retaliatory operations,” the government website said. Yemen's Supreme Security Committee issued a warning to citizens in Shabwa province not to aid the militants.‘British embassy targeted' The British embassy in Sana'a was the target of an Al-Qaeda suicide plot foiled by Yemeni authorities last week, a Defense Ministry-linked website said Thursday. An Al-Qaeda cell, dismantled in Abhar, 35 kilometers north of the capital, last week, “was aimed at infiltrating and blowing up targets, including the British embassy, foreign interests and government buildings,” said a statement posted on the ministry newspaper's 26Sep.net website. “The operation was in its final phase (of preparation)... A group of eight suicide bombers were to carry out the operation using explosive belts and two car bombs,” the statement quoted security sources as saying. The attack on the British embassy “was to be modelled on the operation that was carried out against the American embassy” in 2008, which killed 16 people, it added.
