Top al-Qaida figure killed in Pakistan

"Al-Libi has been waging jihad for more than 10 years and it will be a blow to both al-Qaida and the Taliban, but not in a way that will lead to the downfall of those organizations," said Eric Rosenbach, terror expert and executive director of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Pakistani officials denied any knowledge of al-Libi's death. A Web site that frequently carries announcements from militant groups said al-Libi had been "martyred with a group of his brothers in the land of Muslim Pakistan" but gave no further details.

Residents near the Pakistani town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan said they could hear U.S. Predator drones flying in the area shortly before the explosion, which destroyed the compound.

A Pakistani intelligence official — who also sought anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his work — said local militants quickly retrieved and buried the bodies in the village cemetery after the attack.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he did not "have anything definitive" to say on reports of al-Libi's death.

The Libyan-born al-Libi was among the most high-profile figures in al-Qaida after its leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy al-Zawahri.

Al-Libi also led an al-Qaida training camp and appeared in a number of al-Qaida Internet videos.

In spring 2007, al-Qaida's media wing, Al-Sahab, released a video interview with a bearded man identified as al-Libi. In it, he accuses Shiite Muslims of fighting alongside American forces in Iraq, and claimed that mujahedeen would crush foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Al-Libi also led an al-Qaida training camp and appeared in a number of al-Qaida Internet videos.

He was known to maintain close ties with tribes living on the Pakistani side of the mountainous border, where U.S. officials believe al-Qaida has been regrouping.

"Al-Libi's death is a significant blow to al-Qaida the organization because he is one of the few people left in the organization who has a historical track record," said Farhana Ali, terror expert at the RAND corporation.

But, she added, "al-Qaida's strength is that it knows how to secure membership and recruitment, and because the movement will continue, al-Libi will be replaced."

A Pakistani intelligence official said that al-Libi was based near Mir Ali until late 2003 when he moved back into Afghanistan to take charge of al-Qaida operations on both sides of the border area. But he retained links with North Waziristan, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Mir Ali is the second-biggest town in North Waziristan and has a strong presence of foreign militants, mostly Uzbeks with links to al-Qaida who fled to Pakistan's tribal regions after the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001.

The 2006 Predator attack that failed to hit al-Zawahri drew criticism from Pakistan which said that the 17 killed were people from in the village of Damadola in the Bajur tribal area, about four miles inside Pakistan.

Pakistani security officials said the four top operatives were believed killed in the strike. They 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."

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Associated Press correspondents Robert H. Reid reported from Islambad and Pamela Hess from Washington. Also contributing to this report were Paul Schemm in Cairo, Fisnik Abrashi in Kabul, Zarar Khan in Islamabad and Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan