BEIJING, Jan. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Four senior Al Qaeda members were killed in the American airstrikes in remote northeastern Pakistan last week, two Pakistani officials said on Wednesday.

    The target of the raid, American officials have said, was Al Qaeda's No. 2 figure, Zawahiri, but they have acknowledged that he was not killed in the attack.

    The bodies of the men have not been recovered, but the Pakistani officials said the authorities had been able to establish through intelligence sources the names of three of those killed in the strikes, and maybe a fourth.

    All four of the men named by the Pakistani officials were among the top level of Al Qaeda's inner circle of leadership.

    At least one of the men is believed by the Pakistani officials to have been killed, a 52-year-old Egyptian, known here Abu Khabab al-Masri who is on the United States most-wanted list with a $5 million reward for help in his capture. His real name is Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, who according to the United States government Website, was an expert in explosives and poisons.

    Abu Khabab, the Website says, operated the Qaeda training camp at Darrunta, near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, and trained hundreds of fighters. He was responsible for putting together a training manual with recipes for crude chemical and biological weapons, the Web site says.

    Another Egyptian, known by the alias Abu Ubayda al-Misri, was also believed killed, the Pakistani officials said. He was the chief of insurgent operations in a region near the area where the airstrikes occurred.

    As chief of operations, Abu Ubayda commanded attacks on American forces in his part of southern Afghanistan, and gave training and support to the insurgent groups active in the area. He also served as a liaison for senior Qaeda leaders, and provided logistics and security for the top Qaeda people in the region, the official said.

    After the fall of the Taliban, Abu Ubayda moved to the Pakistani town of Shakai, in South Waziristan, where he commanded a small group of Arabs, but left the area when the Pakistani military mounted operations against the foreign militants there in February 2004, the officials said.

    The third man believed to have been killed was a Moroccan, Abd al-Rahman al-Maghrebi, who is the son-in-law of Mr. Zawahiri, the officials said. Mr. Maghrebi was in charge of Qaeda propaganda in the region, and may have been responsible for distributing a number of CD's showing the activities of Taliban and Qaeda fighters in southern Afghanistan in recent months.

    A fourth man, Mustafa Osman, another Egyptian and an associate of Mr. Zawahiri's, may also have been killed, one Pakistani security official said. But he was less certain of his fate. There may have been one or two more foreign militants killed as well, he said.

    If any or all of the four men were indeed killed, it would be a stinging blow to Al Qaeda's operations, said the American intelligence officials.

    The US airstrikes, which killed 18 civilians, among them women and children, have caused anger across Pakistan, particularly in the restive and autonomous tribal regions, and forced the government to condemn the intrusion by United States warplanes. Enditem

    (Agencies)