Al-Qaeda mastermind of Texas is killed

Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Islamic cleric who masterminded the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airplane in 2009 with explosives hidden in underwear, has been killed in Yemen, the Defense Ministry said.A U.S. government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed al-Awlaki’s death. Al-Awlaki was targeted and killed 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the town of Khashef in the province of Jawf, the Yemeni foreign press office said in an e-mailed statement today. Intelligence services say he also planned a shooting rampage that killed 13 people last year at an army base in Fort Hood, Texas.In April, President Barack Obama approved an order making Al-Awlaki the first American ever to be placed on the Central Intelligence Agency’s hit list. He reportedly survived an attack by a U.S. drone in Yemen in May, according to Al-Arabiya television, which cited a member of his tribe.“He is an excellent role model for what al-Qaeda wants its recruits to be in terms of English language, having exposure to the United States or the West, and adhering to the doctrine of al-Qaeda,” said Theodore Karasik, director of research at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.Yemen’s government is under considerable strain following almost nine months of anti-government protests seeking to topple President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Karasik said.A May 18 report by analyst Carl Ungerer of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute called Al-Awlaki the world’s main Islamic-militant security threat because he can recruit directly in English to persuade a broader, more disparate group of people to operate on their own, rather than in the centralized organization built by the late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and largely dismantled since 2001.Yemen, bin Laden’s ancestral home, was the site of a 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors. Since the start of anti-government protests inspired by uprisings that toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia this year, concerns over the deterioration of security in Yemen have grown. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in April that he saw Saleh’s possible fall as a “real problem.”When a blast at a weapons factory in the south in April left about 100 people dead, the government pointed to al-Qaeda as the main culprit. Yemen’s opposition charged Saleh with fomenting chaos and then posing as the only bulwark against it.The threat posed by al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch was highlighted in October when two parcel bombs sent from the country to U.S. synagogues were seized in the U.K. and Dubai. The bombing attempts in October, using devices concealed in printer cartridges, prompted the U.S. and European countries to bar flights or cargo from Yemen.Yemen, which gets about $300 million a year in security and humanitarian assistance from the U.S., stepped up operations against al-Qaeda after that, including air strikes targeting the group’s camps. Military aid to Yemen includes Huey helicopters, Hummer vehicles and night-vision goggles, the Pentagon said in August.