Another One Bites the Dust

It is a sad state of affairs when a major terrorist is taken out and it gets little or no coverage in the U.S. media but the U.S. has hurt Osama bin Laden (UBL) terribly. Saad bin Laden, son of UBL the Al-Qaeda (AQ) chief, is the latest AQ member to be killed in an American drone strike in Pakistan's north-west frontier earlier this year.

Counter terrorism experts acknowledge that in the case of AQ the best strategy is a constant offensive punch that decapitates the leadership with deadly UAV attacks.

The US official acknowledged that it would be difficult to be completely sure of Saad's identity without a body to carry out DNA tests.

Earlier this year, a former US spy chief, Mike McConnell, said Saad, who is alleged to have worked for AQ in Iran, either escaped or was released from house arrest in Iran and was likely to be in Pakistan.

He played a prominent coordinating role between AQ and the government of Iran, where he is believed to have been arrested in 2003 after he sought sanctuary there after fleeing from Pakistan in 2001. Several high-ranking AQ members are allegedly under house arrest in Iran and direct AQ terrorist operations, logistics and other operations from inside Iran.

Saad allegedly helped facilitate communication between AQ's number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), following an AQ attack on the US embassy in Yemen in 2008.

In January 2009 the US Treasury Department froze the assets of Saad and three other AQ operatives.

Saad is one UBL's 19 children by four wives. Another son is Hamza bin Laden, 17, the youngest son of the AQ leader, was said to be the leader of one of four gangs of "designated assassins" sent to kill Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister.

He featured in a joint Taliban and AQ video, shot in 2001, entitled The Mujahideen of Waziristan, where he is shown participating in an assault on Pakistani security forces in the south Waziristan tribal area.

US forces have stepped up their drone attacks in Pakistan since last September, targeting Taliban and AQ-linked militants in areas bordering Afghanistan. It is not clear whether Saad was close to the location of his father but it is known that Saad was not the target of the attack and U.S. forces may not have known he was present at the location. UBL is believed to be hiding in the violent Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) belt along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Saad was killed in that area of Waziristan. Officials at the CIA and the Tampa, Florida-based U.S. Central Command, (CENTCOM) which oversees U.S. military operations in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, have not confirmed the report.

Saad, supposedly in his 20s and an AQ member was the designated heir apparent to UBL. He is believed to have fled Afghanistan shortly after the U.S. invasion of that land-locked country in October of 2001.