U.S.-led coalition said Tuesday it had killed the second-most-wanted insurgent in Afghanistan, a senior al Qaeda leader from Saudi Arabia

U.S.-led coalition said Tuesday it had killed the second-most-wanted insurgent in Afghanistan, a senior al Qaeda leader from Saudi Arabia who was responsible for setting up terrorist training camps and launching attacks on U.S. and Afghan forces.

The Saudi, identified by the coalition as Abu Hafs Al Najdi, also known as Abdul Ghani, operated mostly from the mountainous Kunar province in northeast Afghanistan. A list of the 85 most wanted terrorists released by the Saudi government in 2009 placed him 21st; that list gave his real name as Salef Nayef Eid al Mahlafi, and put his current age at 27.

In addition to Mr. Najdi, the April 13 airstrike in Kunar's Dangam district bordering Pakistan killed another al Qaeda leader, known as Waqas, the coalition said. It said a total of 25 al Qaeda militants have been eliminated in Afghanistan over the past month. Just a few weeks ago, senior coalition officials had estimated the entire al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan at as low as 50 to 100 fighters.

However, earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that al Qaeda, which by and large had moved out of Afghanistan after the Taliban's downfall in 2001, has returned to set up terrorist training camps in Kunar, Nangarhar and Nuristan provinces along the border with Pakistan's tribal areas. U.S. forces have largely abandoned Nuristan and have withdrawn from many parts of Kunar over the past two years, as the coalition focused its efforts on the southern part of the country.

Although the commander of coalition forces, U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, told reporters earlier this month he doesn't believe al Qaeda is resurging in Afghanistan, some senior U.S. military officers disagree, saying the withdrawals from Nuristan and Kunar have created a vacuum for al Qaeda to come back.

The coalition's Afghanistan target list is classified and the military hasn't released the name of the most-wanted militant. Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahri are believed to be hiding across the border in Pakistan.

Mr. Najdi "was the second-highest priority in our operations to capture or kill insurgents," said U.K. Army Maj. Tim James, a coalition spokesman in Kabul. "Losing such an important member of al Qaeda in Afghanistan will have a significant impact on their ability to operate in Afghanistan and is a blow to the insurgency."

Mr. Najdi, who had been targeted by the U.S.-led forces since at least 2007, operated a network of insurgents throughout Kunar, organizing attacks on Afghan and U.S. bases, plotting kidnappings of foreigners, running militant training camps and providing financing from Pakistan, the military said.

He was an instrumental link between al Qaeda's leadership in Pakistan and its operations in Afghanistan, and his ability to "provide considerably more funding to insurgent fighters" had allowed the insurgency to obtain more weapons and recruits, the coalition said Tuesday.

Separately, the Afghan Ministry of Justice released the results of its initial inquiry into Monday's escape of hundreds of Taliban prisoners from the Sarpoza prison in the southern city of Kandahar. The report faulted coalition and Afghan forces for failing to notice the removal of large amounts of earth during the digging of the tunnel into the prison, and for failing to spot the movement of a large number of vehicles that ferried out the prisoners early Monday morning.

According to the report, a failure to implement regulations allowed the inmates to move freely through the prison block at night, a circumstance that permitted them to escape through a tunnel that opened into an unlocked cell. This showed that some prison officials were implicated in the plot, the report said.

According to a U.S. military official, 61 of the at least 475 Taliban escapees had been rearrested by Tuesday.

The intelligence gathering and airstrike that led to Mr. Najdi's death were conducted by the U.S. military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command, known as JSOC, which has taken the lead in targeting al Qaeda in Afghanistan, a U.S. official said. In contrast, the Central Intelligence Agency leads the campaign of drone strikes that has killed numerous al Qaeda operatives sheltering across the border in Pakistan.

Many American officials say JSOC, which oversees elite units such as the Army's Delta Force and Navy SEAL Team Six, is their most effective tool to combat al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where the U.S. has far more freedom to strike than in Pakistan. But they also fear that JSOC, with a global mission and commitments in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and other places, is already stretched thin.

Still, JSOC has counted a series of recent successes against al Qaeda in northeastern Afghanistan. An airstrike in September killed two senior leaders and other al Qaeda operatives who had gathered at a training camp in Kunar. Special Operations forces in December captured another senior al Qaeda operative, Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, who had long operated in and around Kunar. Mr. al-Masri has since provided intelligence about al Qaeda's attempts to reestablish Afghan bases, U.S. officials say.

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