CAIRO: An audio recording purported to be of Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 in Yemen has surfaced on the Internet with the militant figure denying government reports that he was killed in a US drone strike last month.

In the message, a man claiming to be Saudi-born Saeed Al-Shihri says reports of his death were a “rumor to cover up the killing of innocent Muslim civilians.”

The authenticity of the audio could not be independently confirmed. It was produced by Al-Qaeda’s media arm in Yemen, Al-Malahem, and posted on militant websites late Sunday.

Yemeni officials, speaking anonymously in line with regulations, have said Al-Shihri and six others traveling with him died in a September strike on their vehicle. The missile was believed to have been fired by a US-operated, unmanned drone aircraft.

“The Yemeni government didn’t stop claiming responsibility for the killing of innocent Muslims in Al-Bayda (in south Yemen) on behalf of America, and when it saw that the people weren’t tricked by this lie, they brought in another lie in order to hide the issue, which is the killing of Saeed Al-Shehri,” he said.

On September 10, the Yemeni defense ministry announced troops had killed Shehri in a raid in the eastern Yemeni province of Hadramawt.

At the time, the ministry said “six other terrorist elements accompanying (Shehri) were also killed,” adding that his death dealt a “painful blow to what’s left of” Yemen-based AQAP, which Washington considers to be the global jihadist group Al-Qaeda’s deadliest and most active franchise.

A tribal source told AFP after the raid that a ground operation had taken place in Hadramawt, but would not confirm Shehri’s death.

Shehri’s audio comments refer to repeated US drone attacks in Yemen that target Al-Qaeda suspects in the country’s mostly lawless south and east.

Shehri escaped death in September last year when US drones carried out several air strikes on the village of Al-Mahfad in the southern Abyan province, a former Al-Qaeda stronghold.

The militant leader was released from Guantanamo in 2007 and was flown to Saudi Arabia where he was put through a rehabilitation program.

But after completing the program, Shehri disappeared and later resurfaced as AQAP’s second-in-charge. he had died during the Yemeni army operation.