A US intelligence report written three days before his capture said that Mohammed, 38, the operations chief for Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, had directed agents to target bridges, gasworks and power plants in the US, including New York.

His arrest in a pre-dawn raid on a house in Rawalpindi, near the Pakistani capital, led to optimism that US and Pakistani agents were closing in on bin Laden. A senior Pakistani official said: “We may be one step away from bin Laden. His probability of being in a crowded city (in Pakistan) appears much greater.”

Mohammed was found asleep in a house in Rawalpindi owned by Abdul Qadoos. Dr Qadoos’s son, Ahmed, 42, a leader of the militant Jamaat i-Islami party, was also arrested, as was a third man believed to be an Egyptian national. Ahmed Qadoos’s wife said that some of the agents who took part in the raid “were speaking English and were looking like foreigners from their accent and fair complexion”.

Washington and Islamabad admit that 12 FBI agents are in Pakistan but insist they only provide expertise in communications intercepts and intelligence gathering.

The capture of the most senior al-Qaeda figure since September 11 — Mohammed is accused of being at bin Laden’s side during the attacks — was a boost to President Bush, who has been accused of ignoring the War on Terror because of an obsession with Iraq and President Saddam Hussein.

Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: “He’s the king fish. We got the operations manager. Look out al-Qaeda.”

There was confusion last night over where Mohammed was being held and under whose authority. Pakistani officials said he was handed over to US authorities and taken to an undisclosed location for interrogation. Possibly to avoid criticism from those who object to close Pakistani involvement with the US, Pakistan’s Interior Minister denied this.

“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in the custody of Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies and until we have satisfied ourselves of the nature of his activities in Pakistan, there is no question of handing him over,” Faisal Saleh Hayat said.

The US intelligence report said that Mohammed, accused of planning attacks including the bombings of US Embassies in Africa in 1998 and of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, “is actively involved in al-Qaeda attack planning in CONUS (continental United States)”.

His plan, US officials said, was for al-Qaeda operatives to steal or hijack oil lorries and crash them into petrol stations, while others would destroy the suspension cables on bridges. The threats, part of increased terrorist “chatter” from electronic intercepts and the movement of money, led the White House to raise the threat level for Americans to “high” three weeks ago. Last week it was lowered to “elevated”. The arrest followed the capture of an al-Qaeda suspect last week in Pakistan’s western city of Quetta. Mohammed, also in that hideout, escaped.

Jamaat-i Islami is a partner in the Islamic alliance that governs the two key provinces bordering Afghanistan.

• A car bomb in Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, near Sidon, killed Abu Mohammed al-Masri, the alleged head of al-Qaeda in Lebanon, on Saturday. Two pedestrians were wounded. An unknown group calling itself Youth of the Armed Struggle said it was behind the attack, but Sheikh Jamal Khattab, a Muslim cleric in the camp, blamed Israel.

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