WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed in a statement on Thursday that top al Qaeda bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, believed to have masterminded a failed bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner in 2009, was killed two years ago in a U.S. counterterrorism operation in Yemen.
U.S. officials said last year that they were confident al-Asiri had been killed, but others had cautioned at the time that the evidence was not conclusive.
(Reporting by Makini Brice and Susan Heavey; Editing by Hugh Lawson)