A week after U.S. and Yemeni officials said the Yemen Sheikh Anwar Awlaki may have been killed in a U.S.-backed Christmas eve air strike, a Yemeni journalist says Awlaki has surfaced to proclaim, "I'm alive."
"He said the house that was attacked was two or three kilometers away from him and he was not there," the journalist, Abdulelah Hider Shaea, told ABC News. He said he talked to Awlaki on the phone and recognized his voice from previous interviews.
One week ago, officials said the Christmas Eve attack had targeted a suspected meeting of al Qaeda leaders in Rafd, a mountain valley in eastern Shabwa province.
A statement from the Yemeni embassy in Washington said Awlaki was "presumed" to have been at the site of an al Qaeda meeting south of the capital city of Sanaa.
Source: agencies
KC
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