DUBAI (Reuters) – The top Saudi in al Qaeda’s Yemen-based wing has apparently released an audio message denying reports he was killed last month, a group that monitors Islamist websites said on Monday.

In the audio posted on jihadist websites on Sunday, a man identified as Said al-Shehri said reports of his death were fabricated and aimed to cover up the killing of civilians by U.S. drones, the U.S.-basedSITE Intelligence Group said.

“The news that was reported about my killing in the Arabian Peninsula is a rumor to cover up the killing of the innocent, unarmed Muslims in Yemen, who were killed by American drones in the east and west,” said the man claiming to be Shehri.

Shehri was freed by the U.S. authorities from detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, only to become second-in-command of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has been reported killed before only to emerge unscathed.

Yemen’s Prime Minister Mohammed Basindwa’s media adviser Rajeh Bady told Reuters on Monday the audio “seemed authentic”.

“From start we had doubts that Shehri was killed and we became sure later on that he was still alive,” Bady said.

On September 16, Saudi Arabia’s Interior Minister Prince Ahmed said that kingdom could not confirm the death of Shehri, according to pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

The Yemeni Ministry of Defense website said on September 10 that Shehri and six other militants were killed during a Yemeni army operation in the remote Hadramout province in eastern Yemen. It gave no further details.

But a Yemeni security source had said Shehri was killed in Hadramout by a U.S. drone, rather than by the Yemeni military. U.S. officials declined to comment on the drone strike report.

U.S. officials described Shehri as one of the most important al Qaeda-linked militants to be released from Guantanamo Bay detention facility, where he was taken in January 2002 after being handed over by Pakistan to U.S. authorities.

A former officer in Saudi Arabia’s internal security force, Shehri allegedly joined al Qaeda and helped Saudi militants travel to Afghanistan via Iran, according to a classified Pentagon report made public by WikiLeaks.

Shehri was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and put through a Saudi rehabilitation program for militants. He later returned to the battlefield in Yemen and became AQAP’s number two. Shehri was wanted by Yemen for a suspected role in a U.S. embassy attack in 2008.

A man claiming to be al-Qaida’s No. 2 in Yemen released an audio denying reports that he had died in a U.S. drone attack, as Yemeni officials said Monday 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-Qaida’s media arm in Yemen, al-Malahem, and posted on militant websites late Sunday. When top members of al-Qaida are killed, the militants will frequently report their “martyrdom.”

The U.S. does not usually comment on drone attacks.

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 U.S. 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-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

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

But shortly after the announcement, the Saudi newspaper 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.

In the audio, the man claiming to be al-Shihri lashed out at an August Islamic summit held in Saudi Arabia that focused on Syria’s civil war, saying it failed to help the Syrian people.

He said the summit was “attended by the evil leaders of the Islamic governments, at the forefront Iranian President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, the most evil person on earth.” Many Sunni militants see the uprising against Syria’s President Bashar Assad, an ally of Shiite Iran, as a holy war.

The audio also alluded to a U.S-produced anti-Islam film that gained prominence in mid-September — after al-Shihri’s reported death — and sparked protests across the Muslim world.

Meanwhile, a Yemeni Defense Ministry official said another top al-Qaida 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.

All officials spoke anonymously according to regulations.

Al-Qaida seized several southern Yemeni towns during the chaos of last year’s popular uprising, but was driven from them by the army in a summer offensive into nearby mountains and desert. They have retaliated with bombings and assassinations of Yemeni officials in the capital Sanaa and elsewhere.

Washington considers the Yemen branch of al-Qaida to be the world’s most dangerous offshoot of the terror network, and has sent advisors to Yemen to assist the government in its campaign.

(Reporting by Rania El Gamal in Dubai and Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa; Editing by Jon Boyle)