Moscow: Ayman al-Zawahiri, considered Osama bin Laden's top aide, has been killed in Afghanistan, Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency reported on October 3, citing informed sources.

In a report from Islamabad, the agency cited sources as saying that al-Zawahiri was not killed in fighting but in a special operation carried out by unidentified individuals. It did not give any date.

On September 11, a London-based Islamist had said that al-Zawahiri had recently married two widows of a comrade killed in the US-led campaign in Afghanistan.

An Afghan military chief said in December 2001 that Zawahiri had been injured and possibly killed in an air attack near the Tora Bora cave complex South of the Eastern city of Jalalabad.

However German intelligence sources were reported as saying in early September that bin Laden and senior leaders of his al-Qaida network, including Zawahiri, were probably still alive and in hiding, possibly in a remote mountainous region on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician and a leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was said to be the number two man in bin Laden's al-Qaida network and its chief financier.

He is said to be bin Laden's mentor and one of the chief organisers of the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.