Yemen official: Bomb maker not killed

Al-Qaida's top bomb maker in Yemen did not die in a drone strike on a convoy, a top Yemeni official said Sunday, a report that dashed the hopes of U.S. officials who thought the attack might have killed a trio of top al-Qaida personnel.

The U.S. drone strike Friday killed U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and an American propagandist, Samir Khan, who published a slick English-language Web magazine that spouted al-Qaida's anti-Western ideology.

U.S. intelligence officials had said it appeared that bomb maker Ibrahim al-Asiri was among the dead.

But Sunday the Yemeni official released a list of two others whose bodies had been identified and noted that al-Asiri was not one of them. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The Saudi-born al-Asiri, 29, who is of Pakistani descent, was tied to the so-called underwear bomb that was used in an attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound jetliner on Christmas 2009.

A Nigerian man has been charged in that attack. Al-Asiri was also believed to have been behind an intercepted pair of explosives-laden printers that were mailed from Yemen to the United States in 2010.

There was no immediate official word from the United States regarding the identities of the bodies. -- AP