CAIRO: A man claiming to be Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 in Yemen released an audio denying reports that he had died in a US drone attack, as Yemeni officials said yesterday that another top member of the terror network was killed in a drone strike earlier this month.

The authenticity of the clip, purportedly made by Saeed Al-Shihri, could not be confirmed. It was produced by Al-Qaeda’s media arm in Yemen, Al-Malahem, and posted on militant websites late Sunday. When top members of Al-Qaeda are killed, the militants will frequently report their “martyrdom.”

In the audio message, a man claiming to be the Saudi-born Al-Shihri, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Sufyan Al-Azdi, denounced the Yemeni government for spreading the “rumor about my death ... as though the killing of the mujahideen (holy warriors) by America is a victory to Islam and Muslims.”

Al-Shihri fought in Afghanistan and spent six years in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, before being released in 2007 and going through Saudi Arabia’s famous “rehabilitation” institutes. He fled to Yemen and became deputy to Nasser Al-Wahishi, the leader of the group known also as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Yemeni officials had claimed that Al-Shihri and six others traveling with him died in a Sept. 10 strike on their vehicle. The missile was believed to have been fired by a US-operated, unmanned drone aircraft.

But shortly after the announcement, Asharq Al-Awsat quoted an unnamed senior Yemeni Defense Ministry official as saying that DNA tests of the body have proved that the dead man was not Al-Shihri.

Meanwhile, a Yemeni Defense Ministry official said another top Al-Qaeda member died in an Oct. 4 drone strike. He said that Adel Al-Abbab, ranking fourth in the network’s leadership, was among five whom Yemeni officials had earlier said were hit while they were traveling in two cars through the southern province of Shabwa. Yemen’s media, quoting relatives of Al-Abbab, confirmed his death and said he had been buried in Shabwa.

Meanwhile, an accidental blast at an army ammunitions depot stocked with mines and explosives killed six soldiers in south Yemen yesterday, a local municipality official said.

The blast occurred in an explosives warehouse at an army base in the southern port city of Aden, “killing six soldiers and wounding others,” local municipality chief Abdel Munim Al-Abd told AFP.