Yesterday we reported that a top Al Qaeda leader was killed in an US lead airstrike in Yemen. Today officials are saying that along with the leader, a top bomb maker was also killed. The bomb maker is said to have been the man who tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. Although the death has not been fully confirmed, it could make the drone strike the most successful one yet. Read more after the jump.

@Julie1205

U.S. intelligence indicates that the top al-Qaida bomb-maker in Yemen also died in the drone strike that killed radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, two U.S. officials said Friday.

Ibrahim al-Asiri is the bomb-maker linked to the bomb hidden in the underwear of a Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

The FBI pulled al-Asiri’s fingerprint off that bomb. Authorities also believe he built the bombs that al-Qaida slipped into printers and shipped to the U.S. last year in a nearly catastrophic attack.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because al-Asiri’s death has not officially been confirmed.

Al-Asiri’s death would make the attack perhaps the most successful single drone strike ever. Along with al-Awlaki, the attack also killed Samir Khan, the editor of the al-Qaida propaganda magazine Inspire.

Both Khan and al-Awlaki are U.S. citizens. Al-Awlaki was the target of the attack.

Christopher Boucek, a scholar who studies Yemen and al-Qaida, said al-Asiri was so important to the organization that his death would “overshadow the news of al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.”
HP