Al-Qaeda's No. 2 killed in US drone attack in Pakistan

[1]

Al-Qaeda's second-in-command Atiyah Abd al-Rahman has been killed in a US drone attack in the mountains of Pakistan's unruly Waziristan region, American officials have said, in a significant blow to the terror group still reeling from the death of Osama bin Laden in May.

Rahman, a Libyan explosives expert, was killed on August 22 in Machi Khel village in North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan.

"It's been confirmed that al-Qaeda's number two, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, was killed earlier this week in Waziristan," a senior US Administration official said.

Rahman, who was in his early 40s, presided over the remnants of al-Qaeda and served as a critical link between the lower ranks of the terror group and its top leaders, including bin Laden before his death on May 2 in Pakistan's Abbottabad in a raid by a Navy Seals team.

A senior US administration official called Rahman's death 'a tremendous loss for al-Qaeda' because the group's new chief Ayman al-Zawahiri "was relying heavily on him to help guide and run the organization, especially since bin Laden's death."

American officials described his killing as very significant as compared with other al-Qaeda leaders, because he was one of a new generation of leaders that the network hoped would assume greater control after bin Laden's death.

Rahman had recently taken over as al-Qaeda's top operational planner and after bin Laden was killed, he became al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader under Ayman al-Zawahri.

"Rahman was at the top of al-Qaeda's trusted core," an American official was quoted as saying by the New York Times.

"His combination of background, experience and abilities are unique in al-Qaeda — without question, they will not be easily replaced."

Rahman was seen as a high-priority target in the CIA drone campaign at a time when US officials have described al-Qaeda as near collapse and have said that a small set of successive blows could all but extinguish the organisation behind the 9/11 attacks.

A cache of computer files seized from bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, showed that Rahman had emerged as perhaps the most important operational figure in al-Qaeda.

A veteran militant who was in regular communication with the al-Qaeda chief, Rahman expressed frustration with the mounting toll of the CIA drone campaign.

Rahman rose to the No. 3 position in the group and was charged with running its financial operations after Saeed al-Masri was killed in a US drone strike in May of last year.