Al-Qaida's chief operational planner is believed to have died late last year in a remote part of Pakistan after contracting a fatal illness, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

A U.S. counterterrorism official was quoted as saying that there was "strong evidence to suggest" that Abu Obaidah al-Masri, an Egyptian native suspected of overseeing the London transit bombings in 2005 and the failed transatlantic airliner plot a year later, died in December of hepatitis.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to provide any other details of Masri's demise or to shed light on how U.S. intelligence agencies obtained the information.

However, it's not the first time that Masri has been reported dead.

In January 2006, Pakistani officials said he and three other senior al-Qaida officials perished in a missile attack by an unmanned Predator drone in the village of Damadola, near the Afghan border.

U.S. and Pakistani security officials later determined that none of the al-Qaida leaders were in the village at the time of the strike, but news of their purported deaths continued to circulate erroneously for months.

So far, there has been no confirmation of Masri's reported death from al-Qaida.

(Xinhua News Agency April 10, 2008)