A Yemen-based militant group, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), on Monday denied that airstrikes ordered by the Yemeni government last week had killed its chief Qassim al-Raimi, along with five other top militants.

Last week, the Yemeni government had declared open war on the militant group and announced on Friday the death of the militants in airstrikes. If those strikes did fail to hit their targets, it could weaken Yemen's stance that it can tackle the militant threat posed by al-Qaida without any foreign intervention. In response, Yemen’s interior ministry has promised more airstrikes against Al Qaeda militants in the country.

Meanwhile, on Monday, security forces in Yemen also reported the capture of AQAP second-in-command, Saeed al-Shehri.

According to Al Jazeera, AQAP denied in an internet posting that its chief had been killed.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula made the counter-claim in a statement posted on Monday on the internet, the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors websites used by such groups, said.

"The Yemeni government has been making many false claims ... against the Mujahideen leaders in the Arabian Peninsula," the statement said.

AQAP did, however, concede that some militants were injured as a result of Friday’s raid on hideouts near Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia, reports The Washington Post.

In response to AQAP’s statement, Muttahar al-Masri, Yemen's interior minister, vowed further strikes on al-Qaida in an interview with the state-owned “September 26” newspaper, reports Reuters.

According to Agence France-Presse, Yemen is intent on clearing AQAP from its territory without unwelcome foreign intervention.

While U.S. President Barack Obama has said he has "no intention" of sending troops to Yemen, Sanaa has made it clear it wants no outside troops, just help with training and logistics.

Yemen "wants to avoid a foreign military intervention targeting al-Qaida," said Adel al-Ahmadi, a Yemeni specialist on al-Qaida. ...

In short, as it faces a rebellion in the north and secessionist pressures in the south, Yemen does not want to show up [at a January 27 conference in London, called by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown] as a country that appears to have been beaten by al-Qaida.

According to the Yemen Observer, AQAP’s second-in-command was captured on Monday in the district of Sylan in Shabwah near the borders of Marib province.

A car carrying members of al-Qaeda was turned over when attempted to bypass a newly established sudden checkpoint by the Yemeni security units today and resulted in the capture of Saeed al-Shehri, the second person in command of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, security source told the Yemen Obse

The car was going in a high speed and was carrying al-Shehri and other al-Qaida militants and flipped over.... All the militants were captured.

Shehri’s capture is an important development in Yemen’s latest crackdown against AQAP militants. On Sunday, Yemen’s chief of central security warned the country’s tribes of dire consequences - without specifying what those might be - if they harbored al-Qaida militants, reports Agence France-Presse.

However, The Christian Science Monitor reported that the Yemeni government is ill-equipped to take on AQAP militants.

“In all honesty, [government control] is not so strong,” said Ahmed al-Misri [the governor of the southern Yemeni province of Abyan] in an interview with four journalists attended by several local subgovernors and the regional army chief. “We don’t have enough weapons, we don’t have enough soldiers. Our resources are so stretched that if something happens in the countryside, we can’t respond because there are no helicopters of airplanes.”...

Misri says that al-Qaeda’s presence in the region has grown in the past six to eight months, bolstered by financing brought over by Al Qaeda members from Saudi Arabia....

The Monitor adds that the Yemeni government has insisted that it does not need US military intervention in its fight against AQAP, pointing to recent ground and airstrikes as “proof that it is winning the battle.”

Writing in Yale Global Online, former CIA official Bruce Riedel argues that the Yemeni government must tackle the AQAP threat alone.

Controlling lawless spaces where al-Qaida thrives must be a Yemeni mission. The US can and should help with military and economic assistance but the Yemenis have to buy into the job. Despite years of bad relations between Riyadh and Sana, the Saudis and the Gulf Arabs have to provide the economic aid and jobs that are the only long term solution to salvaging the anemic economy.