Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander, was killed by a US missile strike targeting him specifically on Wednesday:

In a eulogy, it said he was "martyred with a group of his brothers in the land of Muslim Pakistan" and lauded his skills as a battlefield commander and a trainer of other fighters.

"He was an artist in what he did," the statement said, according to a translation by the SITE Intelligence Group, a private organization that researches terrorism.

Libi is the first major al-Qaeda leader known to have been killed or captured in Pakistan in more than two years. In December 2005, a senior operational planner, Abu Hamza Rabia, was killed in a Predator attack in North Waziristan, not far from where Libi is believed to have died.

Another senior al-Qaeda commander, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, was captured in late 2006 in Turkey after departing Pakistan in an attempt to reach Iraq. He was held for several months in a secret CIA prison overseas before his transfer to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in April 2007