US: Two-thirds of top Qaeda leaders 'removed' since 2009

The United States has eliminated more than 20 of al Qaeda's top 30 leaders based in Afghanistan and Pakistan from the battlefield since Barack Obama became president, a top US government security official said on Tuesday.

Daniel Benjamin, head of the State Department's counterterrorism bureau, said that when Obama took office in 2009, al Qaeda's central organization, then led by Osama bin Laden, was a "formidable and dangerous organization." (Reuters)