An al-Qaeda figure who helped plan a deadly attack on the CIA in Afghanistan is believed to have been killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan, a US counterterrorism official said.
“We have indications that Hussein al-Yemeni — an important al-Qaeda planner and facilitator based in the tribal areas of Pakistan — was killed last week,” the official told reporters on Wednesday on condition of anonymity.
Yemeni’s specialty was in “bombs and suicide operations” and he was suspected of playing “a key role” in the December attack at a CIA post in eastern Afghanistan that killed seven Americans, the official said in an e-mail.
The al-Qaeda operative was apparently killed in a US drone strike in the Pakistani city of Miranshah in North Waziristan, in the country’s northwest tribal belt.
Washington has stepped up drone raids in Pakistan against Islamist militants in the past year, because US President Barack Obama has put Pakistan at the center of his fight against al-Qaeda.
The account of Yemeni’s death came as CIA Director Leon Panetta told the Washington Post that aggressive attacks against al-Qaeda had forced the leadership deeper into hiding and hampered its ability to plan operations.
He stopped short of explicitly acknowledging the US bombing raids against militants by unmanned aircraft in Pakistan, a campaign that has become an open secret.
He said the spy agency’s battle against al-Qaeda in Pakistan was “the most aggressive operation that CIA has been involved in in our history.”
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