DNA tests have not proved the killing of Saeed al-Shehri, the number two leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemeni official told the London-based Al-Sharaq Al-Awsat Newspaepr.
The official who requested anonymity said that Al-Shihri was not killed in the attack that killed several al-Qaeda suspects last week.
The state news agency, Saba, said that a specialized medical team headed to Seyoon of Hadhramout to take samples of the persons who were killed in an air-strike.
The military-run 26 September Newspaper had said that al-Shihiri was killed, but the Interior Minister Abdul-Qader Qahatan said he had no confirmed information about his killing.
Al Shehri was said to have escaped death on September 20 last year when US drones carried out several air strikes on the village of al Mahfad in Abyan province in the south.
He was unleashed from Guantanamo in 2007 and was transferred to Saudi Arabia where he was put through a rehabilitation prgram.
But after completing the protram, Shehri disappeared and later resurfaced as the second man in AQAP, which has been repeatedly described by US officials as the most dangerous of the jihadist network's worldwide affiliates.An al-Qeada source denied the killing of al-Shihri and acknowledged that a number of the organization's operatives were killed in the attack. Washington, which has pursued a campaign of assassination by drone and missile against suspected Qaeda members, backed a military offensive in May to recapture areas of Abyan province.