Update: Al-Qaida leader killed in Pakistan not al-Libi

The al-Qaida extremist killed Tuesday by a U.S. drone strike in northern Pakistan was the group's director of external operations, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official told NBC News on Friday.

Abdirizaq Abdi Saleh, better known by his nom de guerre Saleh al-Somali, was a member of al-Qaida's senior leadership, said the official, and "probably responsible" for planning and executing attacks in the U.S. and Europe.

Al-Somali was killed when two missiles fired from a Predator drone struck his car as he and another man left a home. While al-Somali was a senior official, he was not al-Qaida's No. 3 leader after Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The U.S. has long targeted men who held al-Qaida's No. 3 role as director of all international operations. Five of them, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is facing trial in New York, have been killed or captured since 9/11. The strike marks the first time coalition forces killed a top al-Qaida figure in almost a year.