US drone strike targets Al-Qaeda No. 2: Reports
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Al-Qaeda's second-in-command Abu Yahya al-Libi was the target of a US drone strike that killed 15 people in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt on Monday, US media reported.
US officials confirmed to The New York Times that Libi had been the target of the missile attack in North Waziristan, a Taliban and Al-Qaeda stronghold along the Afghan border, but could not say whether he had survived.
"People are looking very closely to see whether he's still alive," a US official told the Times.
"It'll take some time for people to gain a high level of confidence that he's dead. But he's number two in Al-Qaeda, and this would be a major blow."
A senior US official also told ABC News that Libi had been the target of the attack, the third drone strike in as many days and the deadliest this year.
A senior Pakistani security source in Peshawar, meanwhile, told the Times that it ‘looks like he has been killed.’
"This would be a major blow to core Al-Qaeda - removing the number two leader twice in less than a year," a senior US official said, declining to confirm whether Libi was dead or alive.
"The degradation to core Al-Qaeda during the past several years has depleted the ranks to such an extent that there is now no clear successor to take on the breadth of his responsibilities, putting additional pressure on (Ayman al-) Zawahiri to try to manage the group in an effective way."
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, noted that Libi had served as "general manager" for Al-Qaeda's main branch, overseeing its daily operations in Pakistani's lawless tribal regions and managing links to affiliates around the world.
Libi, a Libyan citizen believed to be in his late 40s, has been an influential Al-Qaeda commander. He became the international terror network's deputy leader after the August death of Atiyah abd al-Rahman, another Libyan national who was killed in a US missile strike in North Waziristan.
The militant leader, who has a $1 million US bounty on his head, was falsely reported dead previously, after a December 2009 drone strike in South Waziristan.
Pakistani officials said two missiles slammed into a compound in the village of Hesokhel, east of Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan, before dawn.
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