Summary Five suspected Al Qaeda members were killed in army offensive against jihadists in Yemen.
ADEN (AFP) - Five suspected Al Qaeda members, including a commander with Chechen links, and two soldiers were killed Saturday in an army offensive against jihadists in the south, Yemeni officials said.
The defence ministry named the foreigner as Abu Islam al-Shishani, the second foreign jihadist reported killed this week.
"Four Al Qaeda fighters were killed and nine wounded" in clashes with soldiers in Abyan province, a military source on the ground told AFP.
During fighting in the Sanaj region between Maajala and Wadi Dheiqa, an Al Qaeda bastion, "two soldiers were killed and four more wounded", the source said.
The defence ministry said Shishani was killed in Maajala.
The deaths come as the military presses its latest offensive against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
AQAP, regarded by the United States as the global jihadist network's most dangerous franchise, has been the target of an intensifying drone war this year that has killed dozens.
In a video posted online Saturday, the AQPA chief for southern Yemen, Jalal Belaid al-Marqashi, said the army offensive amounted to a "crusade" ordered by the Unites States.
"We are fighting the enemy along with tribesmen who condemn the American raids and the savage army offensive," he said.
News of Shishani's death came as officials blamed AQAP for a suicide bombing at an intelligence post that wounded two guards, and after gunmen killed an army officer in Aden.
On Friday, another AQAP leader, Qassem al-Rimi, threatened to strike back at any party involved in the drone campaign and denied that foreigners made up the bulk of the group's jihadists.
Shishani was killed "during military operations... against terrorist elements in Abyan" province, said a statement posted on the defence ministry website 26sep.net.
He had reportedly fought against Russian forces in Chechnya before moving to Yemen to join AQAP, a merger of the network's Yemeni and Saudi branches.
On Friday, the defence minister announced that a foreign jihadist commander, Abu Muslim al-Uzbeki, had been killed in clashes in Abyan province.
A security official said Uzbeki travelled in 2011 from Uzbekistan to Yemen, where he was named an AQAP leader in Abyan.
The army's ground offensive backed by warplanes is aimed at clearing the jihadists from their remaining strongholds in villages and smaller towns of Abyan and neighbouring Shabwa province.
