Al Qaeda's second-in-command killed in Pakistan by U.S. droneWashington now believes terror network is on brink of defeat

Al Qaeda’S second-in-command has been killed in Pakistan amid speculation that he was targeted by an unmanned U.S. CIA drone aircraft.

The death of Libyan-born Atiyah Abd Al-Rahman – who had been considered as a possible successor to the group’s leader Osama Bin Laden after his death earlier this year – is such a major blow to the terror network that American intelligence officials claimed last night it was on the verge of defeat.

Al-Rahman, Al Qaeda’s former operational leader, rose to be its No 2 after U.S. Navy Seals killed Bin Laden in a dramatic raid on his Pakistan compound in May.

Dead: Atiyah Abd Al-Rahman is believed to have been killed in a U.S. drone attack

Last night, sources within US President Barack Obama’s administration said Al-Rahman, an explosives expert, was killed on August 22 in the lawless Pakistani tribal region of Wazirista

U.S. officials would not say how Al-Rahman was killed. But his death came on the same day that tribal leaders in the area said CIA drones had struck a vehicle and a guest house.

Such attacks by unmanned aircraft are Washington’s weapon of choice for killing terrorists in the mountainous, hard-to-reach area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Al-Rahman, second-in-command to the new Al Qaeda leader, Egyptian-born Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri, was a close confidant of Bin Laden and once served as his emissary to Iran. He was allowed to move freely in and out of Iran as part of that arrangement and has been operating out of Waziristan for some time.

Last autumn, the U.S. government posted a $1 million reward for information on Al-Rahman’s whereabouts.

Lethal weapon: Unmanned drones are the weapon of choice for the U.S. as they hunt down Al Qaeda operatives hiding in Pakistan's mountainous terrain

Al-Rahman, 38, a fanatical Islamic fundamentalist, linked up with Bin Laden as a teenager in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. He joined Al Qaeda in the early Nineties then fought in Afghanistan.
In 1993 he moved to Algeria to serve as a liaison between Al Qaeda and Algerian radicals fighting a civil war against the military government in the North African nation.
Intelligence analysts learned only in June 2006 that Al-Rahman was a leading player in Al Qaeda when the U.S. military recovered a long letter he had written to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian fighter who ran Al Qaeda’s operations in Iraq.
After Navy Seals killed Bin Laden, they found evidence of Al-Rahman’s role as Al Qaeda’s operational chief.
U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said last month that Al Qaeda’s defeat was within reach if the U.S. could mount a string of successful attacks on the group’s weakened leadership.
‘Now is the moment, following what happened with Bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them,’ he said. ‘If we continue this effort we can really cripple Al Qaeda as a major threat.’