“Yes indeed, 200% confirmed,” the president said. An aide said that Abu Hamza Rabia, described as the organisation’s operational commander, was “very important in Al-Qaeda, maybe number three or five”.

According to eyewitnesses, Rabia died with four militants after missiles fired by an unmanned Predator aircraft exploded at the terrorist hideout in a village in north Waziristan in the early hours of Thursday morning. Other reports claimed that a helicopter had fired rockets into the house, causing bomb-making materials to explode.

American officials confirmed that a missile attack had taken place after the target had been located with US help. But last night they had not confirmed Rabia’s death. The Americans called him one of Al-Qaeda’s “top five” leaders and one US official said that “killing him would indeed be a very big deal”.

The bodies of the dead, said to be three Pakistanis and two Arabs, were not recovered by security forces and were reportedly taken away at daybreak by Al-Qaeda fighters. Local inhabitants said pieces of shrapnel with American markings were retrieved from the area. Intelligence officials said that Rabia went by the alias “Nawab” and that they had intercepted messages between militants saying that Nawab was dead.

Rabia, reported to be Egyptian or Syrian, has been on the most-wanted lists of American and Pakistani officials for more than two years. He is thought to have helped to plan attempts to assassinate Musharraf in December 2003 and was promoted rapidly by Osama Bin Laden’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

He was said to have taken over one of the top spots in the organisation after Abu Faraj al-Libbi was captured in Pakistan last May. Libbi was handed over for interrogation to the Americans, who described him as Al-Qaeda’s third most important leader.

Rabia is said to have inherited Libbi’s job as operational commander and to have overseen relations with international Al-Qaeda cells and other foreign terrorist groups.

Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside Al-Qaeda, said Rabia’s death could mean that the security forces were closing in on Bin Laden: “The fact that Abu Hamza Rabia has been killed clearly demonstrates that Bin Laden is very likely not far away. If the operational momentum can be sustained, I believe that other senior leaders of Al-Qaeda will be killed or captured.”

Gunaratna added that the loss of Rabia was a serious blow to Al-Qaeda that would weaken the organisation’s ability to co-ordinate terrorist attacks from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the most high-profile operational chief of Al-Qaeda and who masterminded the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, is in American custody at an undisclosed location.

“In the Al-Qaeda structure, the operational commander is the most active of all the senior leaders,” said Gunaratna. He added that had Rabia been taken alive, it is likely that he could have led the authorities to Bin Laden.

American officials have been striking a confident note about their ability to capture or kill Al-Qaeda leaders. Porter Goss, head of the CIA, said last week that intelligence officials knew “a great deal more” about where Bin Laden and AlZawahiri were “than we’re able to say publicly”.

However, his remark that the world’s most hunted terrorists had not been found, “primarily because they don’t want us to find them and they’re going to great lengths to make sure we don’t find them”, was met with derision.

Reports of the deaths of top terrorists have proved unreliable in the past. It was briefly claimed last month that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, had been killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, but the rumours were soon scotched by the Americans. Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador in Baghdad, nonetheless insisted that “his days are numbered”.

Rabia, thought to be in his late thirties, was initially sent to Iraq after the American invasion in 2003, but was deemed too valuable to Al-Qaeda’s central command in Afghanistan. He served as chief deputy to Libbi before taking over his job. Pakistani authorities had put a $1m bounty on his head.

Rabia was the target of another Predator attack on November 5, according to NBC news in America. Eight people were killed in a strike on the village of Mosaki, close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Local officials told the news channel that Rabia’s wife and children had died in this attack.

The semi-autonomous border area of north Waziristan is home to many Al-Qaeda militants because of its inhospitable mountainous terrain.

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