A key Al-Qaeda figure, Hussein al-Yemeni, involved in a recent attack on the CIA in Afghanistan, apparently has been killed in Pakistan, a US counterterrorism official told AFP Wednesday.
"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," said the counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Yemeni's specialty was in "bombs and suicide operations" and was suspected of playing "a key role" in a December attack at a US base in eastern Afghanistan that killed seven CIA officers, the official said in an email.
The account of Yemeni's death came as the CIA director, Leon Panetta, said in an interview that aggressive attacks against Al-Qaeda in Pakistan had driven the network's leaders into hiding and left the organization in disarray.
One of Al-Qaeda's lieutenants had even pleaded to Osama bin Laden to come to the group's rescue and provide leadership, according to an intercepted message, Panetta told The Washington Post in an interview released Wednesday.
Yemeni has been linked to an incident in which a Jordanian doctor said to have been a triple agent blew himself up at the US base in Khost near the Pakistani border on December 30, the deadliest attack against the CIA since 1983.
The Al-Qaeda operative was apparently killed in a drone strike in the Pakistani city of Miram Shah.
"The strike that appears to have gotten him was in Miram Shah, a clean, precise action that shows these killers cannot hide even in relatively built-up places," the official said.
Yemeni's death "would be the latest victory in a systematic campaign that has pounded al-Qaeda and its allies, depriving them of leaders, plotters, and fighters," the official said.
He was believed to be in his late 20s or early 30s and had forged links to Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen, the Haqqani network and the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban, the official said.
"He was a conduit in Pakistan for funds, messages, and recruits, but his real specialty was bombs and suicide operations," he said.
In his interview with the Post, Panetta touted recent operations in Pakistan as "seriously disrupting Al-Qaeda."
"It's pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling. And that we really do have them on the run."
Panetta said the network was working to find ways to kill Americans and was trying to recruit people without criminal records or known ties to terrorist groups.
But the CIA is "without question putting tremendous pressure on their operation," Panetta said.
"The president gave us the mission to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda and their military allies and I think that's what we are trying to do."
Panetta has previously defended the spy agency against criticism that security procedures were botched in the suicide bombing in eastern Afghanistan.
Copyright 2010  AFP South Asian Edition
