A senior Al Qaeda commander has been killed in clashes

A senior Al Qaeda commander has been killed in clashes with Pakistani forces near the Afghan border, reports say.

Mustafa abu al Yazid making statements in a recent web address on a radical website
A senior security official who spoke to Sky News on condition of anonymity said he was one of al Qaeda's top leaders.
Pakistani television channels say the commander is Abu Saeed Al Masri who is also known as Abu Mustafa al Yazid.
But both the claim and confirmation of either the attack or the identity of the victim is difficult, if not impossible, to verify.
The claims and their timing may not be entirely coincidental.
They come a day after the Al Qaeda number two Ayman al Zawahri broadcast a video – speaking in English for the first time – in which he repeatedly criticised Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, and said the country was "virtually ruled by the American embassy".
The voice on the tape - which has not been officially verified either - goes on to say: "Pervez (Musharraf) has insulted and compromised Pakistan’s sovereignty by allowing CIA and FBI to operate freely in Pakistan and arrest, interrogate, torture, deport and detain any person, whether Pakistani or not, for as long as they like, thus turning the Pakistani army and security agencies into hunting dogs in the contemporary crusade."
Much of the hour-long tape dwells on appealing to Pakistani soldiers to rethink their role in the fighting that has often pitted them against their countrymen, especially in tribal regions.
If – and it is a big if - the claims are true about Yazid’s death, then it would be a significant coup for those waging the so-called "war on terror".
Yazid is believed to be the terrorist network’s financial mastermind.
Indeed, he was named in the 9/11 Commission as the operation's paymaster.
A British financial expert who studied at the London School of Economics, he is believed by some US investigators to have been the main source of money wired to Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 hijackers' ringleader.
He is also thought to have been a member of al Qaeda's shura (ruling council) since the group was formed in 1988.
In May 2007, the group released a video naming him as its commander of operations in Afghanistan.
Yazid was involved in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1982, and met al Zawahiri in Egypt.
Interestingly, he gave an extremely rare interview to a journalist from one of Pakistan’s independent television stations just last month – the first time any top al Qaeda official has talked to a bone fide journalist since 2002.
In the interview with Najeeb Ahmad from Geo Television, Yazid called for the destruction of Pakistan's government and said all Americans, not just the American government, were "enemies of Islam".
He accused Mr Musharraf of "betraying" them and vowed that al Qaeda would retake Afghanistan.
He may even be linked to the assassination of the former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Soon after her death, Yazid himself claimed al Qaeda had "terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat the Mujahiddin (holy warriors)".
He said the decision to assassinate her was made by the al Qaeda number two - his old friend, al Zawahiri.
The Interior Ministry of Pakistan blamed Baitullah Mahsood – a Taliban commander and al Qaeda sympathiser from the south Waziristan tribal area of Pakistan - for the killing. But this was denied by Mahsood and not accepted by Bhutto's political party, the PPP.
So, if this claim does prove to be true, dispensing with a man who has been so much of a thorn in the side of the Western allies will be heralded as a major step forward in security circles.
If it is true – and even if it is not – there will also be concern that revenge attacks will follow.