A beer named after Osama bin Laden, one of the world’s most notorious terrorist leaders, was sold out after it went viral on social media. The excessive demand forced Mitchell Brewing Co. employees to momentarily disconnect phones and shut down their website, as per a report in the BBC.

According to the company’s website, it is their “most popular production” and is a “light refreshing lager with a hint of citrus taste”. Its label shows a cartoon caricature of the Al Qaeda leader, who was killed in 2011.

Notably, the Billinghay, Lincolnshire-based firm also makes Kim Jong Ale and Putin’s Porter. The brewery and pub are run by a couple- Luke and Catherine Mitchell. Luke Mitchell, the co-owner said, “They’re all tongue-in-cheek names – a nicer outlook on some horrible dictators.”

Several pictures of the beer were posted on social media. “We’ve woken up the last couple of mornings with thousands and thousands and thousands of notifications,” Mr Mitchell told the BBC. His wife added, “It’s been crazy. The phone just hasn’t stopped for the last 48 hours.”

Mr Mitchell said that people laugh when they see the names of the drinks and he thinks that someone can get offended. “Everyone laughs when they see the names on the bar. As far as I’m aware, no one’s been offended, but I’m sure there is someone out there,” he added.

“I think there’s always a risk of somebody being offended,” Mrs Mitchell continued.

From every barrel of Osama Bin Lager, the brewery pays 10 euros to a charity that aids the victims of 9/11 terrorist attack.

Saad al-Awlaki has taken the helm of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) after the death of its former leader, looking to unite the extremist group and change course after a steep decline.

Based in war-torn Yemen’s south, AQAP is considered by Washington as the Sunni Muslim al-Qaeda network’s most dangerous branch. It has claimed numerous high-profile attacks in the U.S. and Europe, including the 2015 assault on Charlie Hebdo magazine in France’s capital that killed 12 people, but these have dropped in recent years.

AQAP announced earlier this month that Awlaki had succeeded Khalid Batarfi, who died after a long illness, according to Yemeni sources close to the group, who requested anonymity.

Assem al-Sabri, an expert on jihadist groups, said the decline in AQAP’s actions was due to internal divisions, “a financial crisis” and fighting against rival Yemeni forces.

Awlaki, a Yemeni national wanted by the U.S., could herald “a major renewal for the organisation”, Sabri said.

‘Powerful ties’

The new leader has good relations with powerful Yemeni tribes — particularly in his home governorate of Shabwa, an AQAP stronghold — that could revitalise the group, a tribal official said.

As the new leader, Awlaki will work to close the group’s ranks, according to Sabri, who said AQAP under his rule may even seek to relaunch attacks in Western countries.

Awlaki, a member of AQAP’s advisory council, has broad support from its religious and military leaders who now look to him to mobilise fighters, Yemeni sources close to the group said.

The AQAP, considered the most dangerous active Al-Qaeda branch had claimed the 2015 attack on French weekly Charlie Hebdo.
| Photo Credit: AP

The leader of Yemen’s branch of al-Qaeda is dead, the militant group announced late on Sunday, without giving details.

Khalid al-Batarfi had a $5 million bounty on his head from the U.S. government over leading the group in the peninsula, through years that saw him imprisoned, freed in a jailbreak, and governing forces in Yemen amid that country’s grinding war.

Though believed to be weakened in recent years due to infighting and suspected U.S. drone strikes killing its leaders, the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has long been considered the most dangerous branch of the extremist group still operating after the killing of founder Osama bin Laden.

Al-Qaeda released a video showing Batarfi wrapped in a white funeral shroud and al-Qaeda’s black-and-white flag.

Militants offered no details on the cause of his death and there was no clear sign of trauma visible on his face. Batarfi was believed to be in his early 40s.

“Allah took his soul while he patiently sought his reward and stood firm, immigrated, garrisoned, and waged jihad,” the militants said in the video, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

The group made the announcement on the eve of Ramzan, the Muslim holy fasting month that Yemen will begin on Monday.

In the announcement, the group said Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki would take over as its leader. The U.S. has a $6 million bounty on him, saying Awlaki “has publicly called for attacks against the United States and its allies.”

Batarfi, born in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, had travelled to Afghanistan in 1999 and fought alongside the Taliban during the U.S.-led invasion. He joined AQAP in 2010 and led forces in taking over Yemen’s Abyan province, according to the U.S.

Batarfi took over as the head of the branch in February 2020. He succeeded leader Qassim al-Rimi, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike. 

“Although in decline, AQAP remains the most effective terrorist group in Yemen with intent to conduct operations in the region and beyond,” a recent United Nations report on Al-Qaeda said.

Estimates provided to the UN put AQAP’s total forces as numbering between 3,000 and 4,000 active fighters and passive members. 

Under Batarfi, AQAP fell further under the influence of al-Qaeda fighter Saif al-Adl, now believed to have led the militant group after the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan in 2022. That came as Yemen has been locked in a war between the Houthi rebels, who hold the capital, Sanaa, and a Saudi Arabia-led coalition backing the country’s exiled government based in Aden.

A police officer inspects a deadbody after the shooting attack, outside the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, France, Friday, in 2015.
| Photo Credit: AP

On March 11, Spain marks 20 years since Europe’s worst Islamist attack when militants claiming to be acting on behalf of Al-Qaeda bombed commuter trains in Madrid, killing 192 people and wounding nearly 2,000 others. The perpetrators said the attack was revenge for Spain’s role in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

A decade later, jihadists invoked the West’s intervention against the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria to unleash a new wave of terror in Europe. A look back at the deadliest attacks over the past two decades:

2005 London bombings

A year after Spain, London’s transport system was targeted on July 7 when four suicide bombers blow themselves up in coordinated strikes on the underground network and a bus. Claimed by Al-Qaeda, the attacks killed 52 people and injure another 700.

2015: Bataclan, Paris

A decade later in France, a new wave of jihadist attacks began, most of which were claimed by the IS. The deadliest took place in Paris on November 13 when IS gunmen went on a shooting and bombing rampage, killing 130 people at the Bataclan concert hall, in bars and restaurants, and at the Stade de France stadium in France’s worst post-war attacks.

2016: Brussels airport and metro

On March 22, IS suicide bombers killed 35 people and injured another 340 at Brussels airport and the Maelbeek metro station, near the European Union headquarters.

Belgian investigators said the assailants were part of the same Brussels-based cell that orchestrated the Paris attacks.

2016: Nice attacks

France was again targeted on July 14, Bastille Day, when a radicalised Tunisian drove a truck through the crowds after a fireworks display in the southern resort of Nice, killing 86 people and injuring more than 400.

The attacker was shot dead by police with IS claiming responsibility for the attack. French investigators did not find any links between the assailant and IS.

2017: Manchester pop concert

Back in Britain, a young Briton of Libyan origin blowed himself up at an Ariana Grande pop concert in the city of Manchester on May 22. The attack killed 22 people including seven children and left around 100 injured.

The bombing was claimed by IS, with the 22-year-old assailant using a homemade shrapnel bomb. His family had fought in Libya’s civil wars.

2017: Barcelona’s Ramblas

On August 17, a group of young radicalised Moroccans and Spaniards of Moroccan origin ploughed a van into pedestrians in Barcelona’s famous Ramblas boulevard.

Later, in the early hours of August 18, five others drove a car into pedestrians in Cambrils, a seaside town 100 km (60 miles) further south.

The two attacks, which left 16 people dead and 140 wounded, were claimed by IS and carried out by a cell comprising mostly youngsters who grew up in Catalonia.

“A military camp in Mali’s restive north was attacked on September 8, a day after two separate assaults by al-Qaeda-linked insurgents killed 49 civilians and 15 government soldiers,” the military said.

“Response and evaluation in progress,” the armed forces said in a brief statement about Friday’s attack on a Malian military camp in the Gao region.

“Thursday’s attacks targeted a passenger boat near the city of Timbuktu on the Niger River and a military position in Bamba further downstream in Gao,” the military junta said in a statement read on state television.

It said responsibility for the attacks was claimed by JNIM, an umbrella coalition of armed groups aligned with al-Qaeda. The passenger boat was attacked near the village of Zarho, about 90 km (55 miles) east of Timbuktu.

The statement said the government killed about 50 assailants while responding to the attacks. It declared three days of national mourning to honor the civilians and soldiers killed in the attacks.

Malian army spokesman Souleymane Dembélé attributed the high death toll to the inability of some of the boat’s passengers to swim, suggesting some might have drowned.

“When the boat was attacked, the soldiers on board exchanged fire with the terrorists. Unfortunately, many civilians who couldn’t swim jumped into the water,” Mr. Dembélé told The Associated Press.

Al-Qaeda-affiliated and Islamic State-linked groups have almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in less than a year, the United Nations said in a report last month, as they take advantage of a weak government and of armed groups that signed a 2015 peace agreement.

“The stalled implementation of the peace deal and sustained attacks on communities have offered the IS group and al-Qaeda affiliates a chance “to re-enact the 2012 scenario,” the report said.

That’s the year when a military coup took place in the West African country and rebels in the north formed an Islamic State two months later.

The extremist rebels were forced from power in the north with the help of a French-led military operation, but they moved from the arid north to more populated central Mali in 2015 and remain active.

In August 2020, Mali’s President was overthrown in a coup that included an Army colonel who carried out a second coup and was sworn in as President in June 2021.

He developed ties to Russia’s military and Russia’s Wagner mercenary group whose head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was killed in a plane crash in Russia on August 23.

Timbuktu has been blockaded by armed groups since late August, when the Malian Army deployed reinforcements to the region. The insurgents are preventing the desert city from being supplied with basic goods.

More than 30,000 residents have fled the city and a nearby region, according to an August report by the United Nations’ humanitarian agency.

The deadly attacks come as the UN prepares to withdraw its 17,000-member peacekeeping mission, MINUSMA, from Mali at the government’s request. The pull-out is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.

The UN deployed peacekeepers in 2013 and MINUSMA has become the most dangerous UN mission in the world, with more than 300 personnel killed. Growing insecurity in Mali has increased instability in West Africa’s volatile Sahel region. The military vowed in the two coups since 2020 to stop the jihadi violence.