U. S. intelligence agencies believe Sheikh Sa'id al-Yazid, al-Qaeda's No. 3 leader, was killed recently in a missile strike in the tribal areas of Pakistan, officials said on Monday. (Reuters)

Al-Qaeda's No. 3, Sheikh Sa'id al-Yazid, is believed to be dead, killed by a U.S. Predator drone strike, a U.S. official said Monday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said word was "spreading in extremist circles" of his death in Pakistan's tribal areas in the past two weeks.

Most prominent is an announcement of his death on the internet by al-Qaeda's so-called general command, reported by the IntelCenter. Al-Yazid has been reported killed before, in 2008, but this is the first time his death has been acknowledged by the militant group on the internet.

Al-Yazid, also known as al-Masri, was the group's prime conduit to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and he was key to day-to-day control, with a hand in everything from finances to operational planning, the U.S. official said.

The official said his death would be a major blow to al-Qaeda, which in December "lost both its internal and external operations chiefs."

Al-Yazid has been one of many targets in a U.S. Predator drone campaign aimed at militants in Pakistan since U.S. President Barack Obama took office. The Egyptian-born militant made no secret of his contempt for the United States, once calling it "the evil empire leading crusades against the Muslims."

"We have reached the point where we see no difference between the state and the American people," al-Yazid told Pakistan's Geo TV in a June 2008 interview. "The United States is a non-Muslim state bent on the destruction of Muslims."

Long tied to extremists

The shadowy, 55-year-old al-Yazid has been involved with Islamic extremist movements for nearly 30 years, since he joined radical student groups led by fellow Egyptian al-Zawahiri, now the No. 2 figure in al-Qaeda after bin Laden.

In the early 1980s, al-Yazid served three years in an Egyptian prison for purported links to the group responsible for the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. After his release, al-Yazid turned up in Afghanistan, where, according to al-Qaeda's propaganda wing Al-Sabah, he became a founding member of the group.

He later followed bin Laden to Sudan and back to Afghanistan, where he served as al-Qaeda's chief financial officer, managing secret bank accounts in the Persian Gulf that were used to help finance the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

After the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001, al-Yazid went into hiding for years. He surfaced in May 2007 during a 45-minute interview posted on the web by Al-Sabah, in which he was introduced as the "official in charge" of al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan.

Some security analysts believe the choice of al-Yazid as the Afghan chief may have signalled a new approach for al-Qaeda in the country where it once reigned supreme.

Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA unit that tracked bin Laden, believes bin Laden and al-Zawahiri wanted a trusted figure to handle Afghanistan "while they turn to other aspects of the jihad outside" the country.

Al-Yazid had little background in leading combat operations, but terrorism experts say his advantage was that he was close to Taliban leader Mullah Omar. As a fluent Pashto speaker known for impeccable manners, al-Yazid enjoyed better relations with the Afghans than many of the al-Qaeda Arabs, whom the Afghans found arrogant and abrasive.

That suggested a conscious decision by al-Qaeda to embed within the Taliban organization, helping the Afghan allies with expertise and training while at the same time putting an Afghan face on the war.

Al-Yazid himself alluded to such an approach in an interview this year with Al-Jazeera television's Islamabad correspondent Ahmad Zaidan. Al-Yazid said al-Qaeda fighters were involved at every level with the Taliban.

"We participate with our brothers in the Islamic Emirate in all fields," al-Yazid said. "This had a big positive effect on the [Taliban] self-esteem in Afghanistan."