Pakistan said on Saturday that a senior Syrian al-Qaeda commander had been killed in the country's North Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed confirmed the death of Abu Hamza Rabia, international operational commander of al Qaeda, in a blast.

"He died along with two colleagues when they were making explosives in a house," the information minister told Geo television.

"The DNA test has confirmed that Abu Hamza has died," he said. "He was an important man and we had been searching for him for a long time. Abu Hamza was either number 3 or 5 in al-Qaeda hierarchy."

According to the minister, two other people also died in the blast but their identities have not yet been established.

Rashid said that three people were injured in the incident. He said that action would be taken whenever information about the presence of foreign suspects were received.

Rashid's statement came soon after Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf confirmed the killing of a top Syrian al-Qaeda operative on his arrival in Kuwait.

"Yes, 200 percent," was Musharraf's response when he was asked by reporters at the airport to confirm a newspaper report that Hamza Rabia was killed on Thursday.

Source: Xinhua