Al Qaeda's underwear bomb plot mastermind killed by special forces in 'biggest hit since Bin Laden'

Ibrahim al-Asiri thought to be dead - most senior member since Bin Laden

Al-Asiri believed to be behind explosive devices including pant bombs

Comes after 'U.S.' backed forces engaged vehicle in gun battle



Those inside managed to shoot back, but all inside were reportedly killed

Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, Al Qaeda's chief bombmaker, is believed to have been killed in an ambush by U.S- backed special forces in Yemen

An Al Qaeda mastermind whose plots included a notorious aircraft underpants bomb is believed to have been killed by special forces in Yemen.

Ibrahim al-Asiri, who was also suspected of concealing explosives in ink cartridges found on planes at East Midlands Airport, is said to have died in a shootout.

Officials in Yemen said they were ‘confident’ the terror chief, who specialised in building devices for mid-air attacks, was one of the victims of the ambush.

Efforts were yesterday being made to identify the body but, if confirmed, the strike will be the most high-profile against Al Qaeda leaders since Osama bin Laden and hate cleric Anwar al-Awlaki were killed in 2011.

Saudi Arabian-born al-Asiri, 32, is believed to have made the underpants bomb carried by one-time British student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his attempt to blow up an airliner over the US on Christmas Day 2009.

A US official described the target of the ambush as ‘high-value’. Al-Asiri is one of the CIA’s top two targets in the region.

The other extremist heading the hit-list is Nasir al-Wuhayshi, leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and a former member of bin Laden’s inner circle.

A Yemeni government official said: ‘The body of a high-value Al Qaeda target is being tested to confirm its identity.’

The shooting, on Sunday night, was part of a three-day operation against AQAP.

At least 65 militants were killed in the offensive involving CIA-controlled drone strikes, bombing raids by Yemeni jets and missions by US and Yemeni special forces.

The raids followed the release of a video showing al-Wuhayshi urging a large group of extremists at an open-air meeting to ‘eliminate’ America.

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People gather near a destroyed car that was carrying militants in the Sawmaa area of al-Bayda province, Yemen, Saturday

At least 14 people, including 12 al-Qaeda suspects, were killed on Saturday in a drone raid in the central Yemeni province of Bayda, Yemeni media reports said

The ambush took place on a road in the lawless southern Shabwa province, east of the capital Sanaa. Al-Asiri is Al Qaeda’s most notorious bombmaker and is the prime suspect in several airliner plots.

He was named as the extremist behind a plot by foiled suicide bomber Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian former student at University College London, who tried to detonate explosives on a Northwest Airlines flight that was en route from Amsterdam to Detroit in 2009.

The bomb was designed to be carried within the fabric of his underwear. It contained no metallic parts, making it extremely hard to detect.

After this plot failed, al-Asiri tried in 2010 to conceal Semtex-style explosives in Hewlett-Packard printer ink cartridges placed on a UPS Airline cargo flight by two Yemeni women.

They were discovered at East Midlands Airport and removed from a plane en route to Chicago.