A Central Intelligence Agency drone strike in Pakistan's tribal area on Jan. 10 killed an operative of Al Qaeda who was believed to be planning attacks against the West, an American official confirmed on Thursday.
The operative, Aslam Awan, a Pakistani citizen, was the "external operations planner" for the terrorist network, the official said. He was hit by a missile fired from a remotely controlled aircraft near the town of Miram Shah, in northwestern Pakistan, a center of militant activity.
Awan appeared to have spent several years in Britain. A man by that name, who would now be in his late 20s, moved from Pakistan to Manchester in 2002 on a student visa, according to British news reports from 2009. He worked in a clothing store and joined a group of young militants in the British city, but returned to Pakistan.
Later, Awan sent a letter to a friend in Britain that the authorities there described as a "call to arms." The letter encouraged the friend to join the fight against American troops in Afghanistan.
The American official, who would speak of the classified drone program only on the condition of anonymity, called Awan "a senior Al Qaeda external operations planner who was working on attacks against the West." He added that "his death reduces Al Qaeda's thinning bench of another operative devoted to plotting the death of innocent civilians."
The Jan. 10 drone missile strike was the first in nearly two months, after a hiatus intended by American officials to keep from exacerbating tensions with Pakistani security officials.
Relations between the two countries, never easy in recent years, have been especially strained since American troops entered Pakistani territory in May and killed Osama bin Laden without alerting Pakistani officials. An American airstrike in November killed two dozen Pakistani troops on the border with Afghanistan in a mix-up that inflamed Pakistani anger at the United States.
American officials have discounted recent reports that a drone strike also killed a more prominent militant, Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban.
While several militant groups remain active in Pakistan's mountainous tribal area, launching attacks against Pakistani troops and supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda's core has been devastated by the drone campaign.
The C.I.A. first accelerated its drone strikes in mid-2008, under President George W. Bush, and has stepped them up further under President Obama.