UPDATE 2-Trump confirms al Qaeda bomb-maker, mastermind of "Underwear Bomber" attempt and other attacks, is dead

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By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump
on Thursday confirmed that al Qaeda's top bomb-maker, Ibrahim
Hassan al-Asiri, believed to be the mastermind behind the failed
bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner in 2009, has been killed.
Trump said in a White House statement that al-Asiri was
killed in 2017 in a United States counter-terrorism operation in
Yemen.
U.S. officials said last year they were confident al-Asiri
had been killed but others had said at the time that the
evidence was not conclusive. Washington had long sought al-Asiri, a Saudi-born militant
with al Qaeda's Yemen branch who was known for his ability to
create hard-to-detect bombs, including some implanted in suicide
bombers.
Al-Asiri is believed to have masterminded the attempted
Christmas Day, 2009, bombing of a passenger jet flying from
Amsterdam to Detroit. A Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab,
is serving multiple life sentences in prison for trying to set
off the bomb in his underwear.
Trump's announcement confirmed that al-Asiri built the bomb
used in that failed attempt as well as the printer cartridge
bomb used in a plot disrupted in 2010.
Al-Asiri also built an explosive device intended to be used
against a passenger aircraft in 2012, and the device used in the
attempted assassination of former Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Nayef in Jeddah in 2009.
Al-Asiri's death significantly handicapped al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula, Trump said.
The United States added him to its terrorism blacklist in
2011 after he was believed to be the key suspect in the 2010 al
Qaeda parcel bomb plot against the United States.
Al-Asiri was born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia to a military
family and has been accused of recruiting his younger brother
Abdullah as a suicide bomber for the failed attack on Prince
Mohammed bin Nayef.