The tip-off which enabled two Hellfire missiles fired by US drones to locate and kill the US-born Anwar al-Awkali reached US intelligence as a result of a power struggle within Al Qaeda's leadership in Yemen. Killed too was a second US-born al Qaeda operative. debkafile's counter-terror sources disclose that the internal strife was sharpened by the recent arrival in Yemen of the new Al Qaeda leader Ayman Zuwahiri, who determined to purge AQAP ranks of its American element ahead of his next plans.

The Obama administration has elevated its military intervention in Yemen by deploying Predator drones against Al Qaeda strongholds at a secret new US base in Al Hodaydah  on Yemen's Red Sea coast, debkafile's exclusive military sources disclose. The UAVs were brought in after two explosive parcels were mailed from Yemen last month, the handiwork of US-born Al Qaeda leader Anwar Al-Awlaki. CIA director Leon Panetta selected the site of the covert base in January. It was finished in April.

The Yemen-based AQAP leader proclaims himself "the new Osama bin Laden."

As DEBKA-Net-Weekly reveals in its latest issue out last Friday, Al Awkali claims to usher in a new brand of Islamist terror against America, one that is practical and is divorced from religious and moral constraints.Al Qaeda's Bin Laden-Zuwahiri era is dead, he says. There are more urgent missions than Afghanistan.
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