Global General

Al Qaida leaders killed or captured in Pakistan

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-05-02 20:21

The killing of Osama bin Laden in a firefight with US forces in a Pakistani town on Sunday caps a series of al Qaida leaders captured or killed in the country since the September 11 attacks.

Here are some of the other top militants hunted down in Pakistan, a country at the centre of the fight against Islamist militants.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged operational mastermind of the September 11 attacks, was captured in a 2003 raid on a house in the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad.

Ramzi bin al-Shibh, described as a key facilitator of the September11 attacks, was arrested in September 2002.

Abu Zubaydah, who is thought to have served as Bin Laden's field commander, was captured in Pakistan in March 2002.

Libyan-born Abu Laith al Libi, a top al Qaida operative in Afghanistan, was killed in a US missile strike in Pakistan's North Waziristan in January 2008.  

Sheikh Said Masri, an Egyptian believed to have acted as the operational leader of al Qaida, was killed in a US drone strike in the Pakistani northwest in May 2010. Masri, also known as Mustafa Abu Yazid, was thought to have been the key conduit to Bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri.