Al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan reportedly killed

Limited success in targeting al-Qaida
The U.S. has in the past sought to kill top al-Qaida leaders but with limited success.

Al-Zawahri, al-Qaida’s second-in-command, was the target of a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan near the Afghan border on Jan. 13, 2006, but he was not at the site of the attack. Pakistan condemned the missile strike that killed at least 17 people in the village of Damadola in the Bajur tribal area, about four miles inside Pakistan.

Pakistani security officials said four top operatives were believed to be killed in that strike. The officials said the operatives included Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, who the U.S. Justice Department called an explosives and poisons expert; Abu Obaidah al-Masri, the al-Qaida chief responsible for attacks on U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan; and Abdul Rehman al-Maghribi, a Moroccan and relative of al-Zawahri, possibly his son-in-law.

Some of the officials also said a fourth man, Khalid Habib, the al-Qaida operations chief along the Afghan-Pakistan border, was believed to be dead.

Rosenbach said militants who rise to No. 3 al-Qaida positions, like al-Libi, are often in charge of planning operations, exposing them to capture or death. Others he named included Mohammed Atef, who was killed, and Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who was captured.

“It has to be one of the most dangerous jobs on earth. They generally don’t last longer than a year—— mostly because the al-Qaida chief of operations has a large ’signature’ resulting from planning operations,” he said. “Our intelligence has done an excellent job in tracking them down.”

Associated Press correspondents Paul Schemm in Cairo, Fisnik Abrashi in Kabul, Zarar Khan in Islamabad and Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan and Pamela Hess in Washington contributed to this report.

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