Pakistani helicopter gunships swooped on a militant hideout in a pre-dawn raid yesterday and shot dead a top al-Qaeda operative who was wanted in the United States for planning to bomb the New York subway system, the military said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation had offered a $5 million reward for the capture of Saudi national Adnan el-Shukrijumah, 39, who it said was believed to be al-Qaeda’s external operations chief at one time.

Shukrijumah, a Saudi Arabian native with a Guyanese passport, is the most senior al-Qaeda member ever killed by the Pakistani military.

His accomplice and local facilitator were also killed in the raid

“In an intelligence borne operation, top al-Qaeda leader Adnan el Shukrijumah was killed by [the] Pakistan Army in an early morning raid in Shinwarsak, South Waziristan today,” the military statement said. The remote region borders Afghanistan.

“His accomplice and local facilitator were also killed in the raid,” the statement said.

The military said that Shukrijumah had recently been forced to move by a Pakistani military operation in neighbouring North Waziristan.

The region was the Taliban’s key stronghold in Pakistan and a hotbed of militancy until the military launched an offensive to retake the territory on June 15.

In Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, all phone lines and mobile phone signals were shut down overnight and the roads were blocked, a Reuters reporter there said.