Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, have eluded pursuers. An airstrike on Damadola in 2006 is thought to have narrowly missed Zawahiri.
But a systematic assault on operational bosses seems to be paying off, officials said. A Libyan chief died in January during one of a flurry of airstrikes in Pakistan this year.
Abu Ubaida al Masri, the network's external operations chief, died of an infectious disease about the same time. His Iraqi predecessor was captured in late 2006.
Jazairi surfaced in Pakistan about six years ago and was a mid-level figure who gained stature as other plotters and trainers fell, officials said.
The European official said, "He was someone you could imagine as a potential successor to Masri."
Although many Al Qaeda fighters are Algerian, few Algerians have been detected in the core leadership in Pakistan or Afghanistan. They have been active mostly in North Africa, Europe and Iraq. And the Al Qaeda leadership has been wary because of fears that Algerian extremist movements are infiltrated by Algerian spies.
The increasing success and pace of airstrikes this year indicates that American spy agencies and their allies have made progress in infiltrating Al Qaeda in Pakistan, said Louis Caprioli, a former anti-terrorism chief of France's DST intelligence agency.
"You have to have good intelligence on the ground to hit a target like that," Caprioli said. "It requires human as well as technical intelligence. I think the money that the Americans are spreading around is having an effect.
"Also, there are troops in Afghanistan, prisoners being interrogated. This is a long-term effort that is paying off."
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rotella@latimes.com
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josh.meyer@latimes.com
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Meyer reported from Washington and Rotella from Madrid. Times staff writer Laura King in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
