Saudis Say Yemeni Islamic State Leader Captured by Jared Malsin – Wall Street Journal
Saudi and Yemeni special forces captured the man they identified as the leader of Islamic State’s branch in Yemen this month in a raid aided by elite U.S. forces and American intelligence, Saudi and American officials said.
The seizure of Abu Osama Al-Muhajir on June 3 deals a blow to one of Islamic State’s smaller branches, one of several on which the group has relied since losing control of its territory in Syria and Iraq over the past year. Islamic State and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula have taken advantage of the chaos in Yemen to expand their influence and carry out attacks, including the bombing of a pair of mosques in the capital San’a that killed at least 137 people in 2015.
The operation marked a victory for a Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen’s civil war, which has devastated the country and caused what the United Nations calls one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Saudi Arabia launched a military assault on Yemen in 2015 to combat Iran-allied Houthi rebels who overran San’a…