Drone strike kills Qaeda mastermind of CIA bombing

A top Al Qaeda leader allegedly responsible for the deaths of as many as seven Central Intelligence Agency agents in a suicide bombing last December has been reportedly killed in a drone attack, media reports said. Several US media outlets reported that Hussein al-Yemini, the man said to be responsible for the CIA bombing, was apparently killed in a drone attack in Miran Shah area of Pakistan on March 8.

"Al-Yemeni would be the latest victory in a systematic campaign that has pounded Al Qaeda and its allies, depriving them of leaders, plotters, and fighters," a US official was quoted as saying by the CNN.

Meanwhile, CIA Director Leon Panetta on Wednesday said that relentless attacks against the Al Qaeda has left the organisation rudderless and less capable of planning sophisticated operations. So profound is Al Qaeda's disarray that one of its lieutenants, in a recently intercepted message, pleaded to Osmaa bin Laden to come to the group's rescue and provide some leadership, Panetta told The Washington Post in an interview.

According to The Washington Post, Panetta credited an increasingly aggressive campaign against Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies, including more frequent strikes and better coordination with Pakistan, in a near-acknowledgement of the CIA's war against extremists in Pakistan. He called it "the most aggressive operation that the CIA has been involved in our history."

"Those operations are seriously disrupting Al Qaeda," Panetta said, adding, "it's pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling. And that we really do have them on the run."

At the same time, Panetta acknowledged that Al Qaeda was continuing to look for ways to kill Americans and was specifically seeking to recruit people who lacked criminal records or known ties to terrorist groups to carry out missions.

"Still, the CIA, under the Barack Obama administration, is without question putting tremendous pressure on their operation," Panetta was quoted as saying.

"The President gave us the mission to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and their military allies and I think that's what we are trying to do," he said.