WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Thursday confirmed that al Qaeda`stop bomb-maker, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, believed to be the mastermindbehind the failed bombing of a US-bound airliner in 2009, has been killed.
Trump said in a White House statement that al-Asiri was killed in 2017 in aUnited States counter-terrorism operation in Yemen. US officials said lastyear they were confident al-Asiri had been killed but others had said atthe time that the evidence was not conclusive.
Washington had long sought al-Asiri, a Saudi-born militant with al Qaeda`sYemen branch who was known for his ability to create hard-to-detect bombs,including some implanted in suicide bombers.
Read Top Stories
Al-Asiri is believed to have masterminded the attempted Christmas Day,2009, bombing of a passenger jet flying from Amsterdam to Detroit. ANigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is serving multiple life sentencesin prison for trying to set off the bomb in his underwear.
