Yemeni security forces arrested two senior al Qaeda members-a Yemeni and an Egyptian-in an intensive hunt for extremists in the remote mountains of the southern province of Abyan, officials said on Thursday.
Egyptian "Sayyed Imam Sherif, an influential member of al Qaeda, was arrested on Wednesday" in the Lawder area, one official told AFP.
The announcement of Sherif's arrest followed one earlier in the day that security forces had netted top al Qaeda leader Abdul Rauf Nassib in the same operation.
"Sayyed Imam Sherif is also wanted by Egyptian police," the official said, adding that "he was the number one in Egypt's Islamic Jihad, and succeeded by Ayman al-Zawahiri," currently al Qaeda number two.
The two men were captured at the same time, he said, after security forces backed by helicopters and armoured vehicles were deployed on Wednesday in the area where they surrounded "about a dozen" suspected extremists.