WASHINGTON: Top U.S. officials met Saturday to review the threat of a terrorist attack that led to the weekend closure of 21 U.S. embassies and consulates in the Muslim world and a global travel warning to Americans. President Barack Obama was briefed following the session, the White House said.

Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, led the meeting and then joined Lisa Monaco, Obama’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, in briefing the president, the White House said in a statement.

“The president has received frequent briefings over the last week on all aspects of the potential threat and our preparedness measures,” according to the statement.

Among those at the meeting Saturday afternoon were the secretaries of state, defense and homeland security and the directors of the FBI, CIA and the National Security Agency, according to the White House. Also attending was Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In an interview Friday with ABC News, Dempsey said officials had determined there was “a significant threat stream” and that the threat was more specific than previous ones. The “intent is to attack Western, not just U.S. interests,” he said.

The global travel warning was the first such alert since an announcement before the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The warning comes less than a year since the deadly September attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, and with the Obama administration and Congress determined to prevent any similar breach of an American embassy or consulate.

The State Department’s warning urged U.S. travelers to take extra precautions overseas. It cited potential dangers involved with public transportation systems and other prime sites for tourists, and noted that previous attacks have centered on subway and rail networks as well as airplanes and boats.

Travelers were advised to sign up for State Department alerts and register with U.S. consulates in the countries they visit.

The statement said that al-Qaida or its allies might target either U.S. government or private American interests. The alert expires on Aug. 31.

The State Department said the potential for terrorism was particularly acute in the Middle East and North Africa, with a possible attack occurring on or coming from the Arabian Peninsula. The diplomatic facilities affected stretch from Mauritania in northwest Africa to Afghanistan.

U.S. officials pointed specifically to Yemen, the home of al-Qaida’s most dangerous affiliate and the network blamed for several notable plots against the United States, from the foiled Christmas Day 2009 effort to bomb an airliner over Detroit to the explosives-laden parcels intercepted the following year aboard cargo flights.

“Current information suggests that al-Qaida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct attacks in the period between now and the end of August,” a department statement said.

Yemen’s president, Abdo Rabby Mansour Hadi, met with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House on Thursday, where both leaders cited strong counterterrorism cooperation. This past week, Yemen’s military reported a U.S. drone strike killed six alleged al-Qaida militants in the group’s southern strongholds.

Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said the embassy threat was linked to al-Qaida and concerned the Middle East and Central Asia.

“In this instance, we can take a step to better protect our personnel and, out of an abundance of caution, we should,” Royce said. He declined to say if the National Security Agency’s much-debated surveillance program helped reveal the threat.

A spokesman for the Taliban militant group immediately denied any responsibility for the attack, which rocked the city and left a mosque, private houses, tailors and other nearby shops in ruins.

“A car containing explosives hit a barrier near the consulate and detonated,” Ahmadzia Abdulzai, spokesman for Nangarhar province, of which Jalalabad is the capital, told AFP. “There were three suicide bombers in the car.”

Nangarhar police chief Sharif Amin confirmed that the consulate was the intended target of the blast, which created a large crater in the road as survivors wearing blood-stained clothing ran for cover.

The interior ministry condemned the attack as “heinous” and said nine people had died, with 21 other civilians wounded. The death toll included at least one child.

An AFP photographer reported that ambulances rushed to the scene and took the injured to hospital as security forces cordoned off the area, where several large buildings were badly damaged.

Syed Akbaruddin, a spokesman for the Indian foreign ministry in New Delhi, said on his Twitter account that all officials were safe after the attack — the first major strike in Afghanistan during the holy month of Ramadan that started on July 10.

India, which has spent more than two billion dollars of aid in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime fell in 2001, has been previously targeted in the war-torn country.

In 2008, a car bomb attack on the Indian embassy killed more than 60 people and, in 2010, suicide attacks on two guesthouses killed at least 16 people including seven Indians.

“Our fighters have not carried out any attack in Jalalabad,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP. “We do not claim the responsibility for this attack.”

Jalalabad is situated on the key route from the Pakistani border region — where many militants are based — to Kabul, and it has been the location of repeated attacks in recent years.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) compound in the city was hit on May 29, with the Taliban rebels also denying any involvement.

SANAA, Yemen: The Yemen-based branch of al-Qaida confirmed on Wednesday that the group’s No. 2 figure, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, was killed in a U.S. drone strike.

The announcement, posted on militant websites, gave no date for the death of Saudi-born Saeed al-Shihri.

The confirmation was significant, however, because al-Shihri had twice before been reported dead but the terror group later denied those reports.

His killing is considered a major blow to the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch, known as Al-Qaida in The Arabian Peninsula.

Yemeni security officials said al-Shihri died of serious injuries sustained when a drone strike targeted him in November last year.

Al-Shihri had survived an earlier drone attack, in September 2012, the officials added, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media.

Wednesday’s announcement came in a video purporting to show the group’s chief theologian, Ibrahim al-Robaish, eulogizing al-Shihri.

In the video, al-Robaish said al-Shihri was hit by the drone while speaking on his mobile telephone in the province of Saadah, north of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa.

The authenticity of the video, which was first reported by the U.S. monitoring service SITE, could not be independently confirmed but it appeared on militant websites commonly used by al-Qaida.

Al-Shihri, also known as Abu Sufyan al-Azdi, fought in Afghanistan and spent six years in Guantanamo. He was returned to Saudi Arabia in late 2007 and later fled to Yemen to join the al-Qaida branch there.

In one of his last videos, which appeared on the Internet in April, al-Shihri harshly criticized Yemen’s neighbor to the north, Saudi Arabia, for its policy of allowing the United States to launch deadly drone strikes from bases in the kingdom.

Washington considers the Yemen-based al-Qaida to be the most dangerous offshoot of the terror network after it was linked to several attempted attacks on U.S. targets, including the foiled Christmas Day 2009 bombing of an airliner over Detroit and explosives-laden parcels intercepted the following year aboard cargo flights.

The group made major territorial gains in Yemen last year, following the uprising that forced the country’s longtime leader Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down after more than 30 years in power. Al-Qaida militants and their allies seized several towns and cities in the south of the country before they were pushed back in a months-long, U.S.-aided military campaign by government forces last year.

Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, in office since last year, has worked closely with the U.S. in pushing the group back.

An offensive by Yemeni troops backed by U.S. airpower and advisers drove militants out of the southern cities and into mountain hideouts. Airstrikes, believed to be by U.S. drones, have killed a number of key al-Qaida operatives.

Eyewitnesses said some of the victims were burned alive in the attack, in Mamudo town, Yobe state.

Dozens of schools have been burned in attacks by Islamists since 2010.

Yobe is one of three states where President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in May, sending thousands of troops to the area.

A reporter from the Associated Press found chaotic scenes at the hospital in nearby Potiskum, where traumatised parents struggled to identify their children among the charred bodies and gunshot victims.

Survivors said suspected militants arrived with containers full of fuel and set fire to the school.

Some pupils were burned alive, others were shot as they tried to flee.

The BBC’s Will Ross, in Lagos, says this area has frequently been attacked by the Boko Haram militant group.

More than 600 people were believed to have been killed in 2012 by the group, which is fighting to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north.

The official Xinhua News Agency said knife-wielding mobs attacked police stations, a local governmentbuilding and a construction site Wednesday morning in a remote town in the Turkic-speaking Xinjiang(shihn-jahng) region.

The unrest in in Lukqun, a township in Turpan prefecture, left 17 people dead, including nine policemen, before police shot and killed 10 rioters, the agency reported. Xinhua cited officials with the region’s Communist Party committee.

Xinjiang is home to a large population of minority Muslim Uighurs (WEE’-gurs) but is ruled by China’s Han ethnic majority. It has been the scene of numerous violent incidents in recent years, including ethnic riots in Urumqi in 2009 that left nearly 200 people dead.

The report said three rioters were seized, and that police pursued fleeing suspects, though it did not say how many. It said three people were injured by the unrest and were being treated.

NDELE, Central African Republic: Armed with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles, Seleka rebels who ousted Central African Republic’s president six weeks ago are solidifying their control over the country’s lucrative diamond industry and have even been selling some of the stones, witnesses here in the isolated and violent north say.

Rebels have for several years controlled some of the diamond-producing areas in the north, but with the overthrow of PresidentFrancois Bozize in March the Seleka rebel coalition now is the government, posing one of the greatest challenges in years to international efforts to stem the trade of “blood diamonds.”

Fighters are blocking off diamond-producing areas, residents and local officials told an Associated Press reporter who recently visited Ndele, a rebel-controlled town in northern Central African Republic.

Central African Republic’s new government insists that it intends to fully comply with the Kimberley Process, which aims to curb the trade in blood diamonds whose profits have driven some of the bloodiest conflicts in Africa over the past 20 years. It went into effect in 2003 in the aftermath of the brutal West African civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia where diamonds were used by armed groups to fund the conflicts.

“We remain in the Kimberley Process and we respect the principle,” said new Information Minister Christophe Gazam Betty.

Newly appointed Minister of Mines Herbert Gontran Djono-Ahaba declined on several occasions to be interviewed on the subject. He is a member of the Seleka alliance, whose fighters have set up checkpoints along the dirt paths leading to mining areas around Ndele.

Seleka rebels are now in control there, say residents who fled the town of Sangba, about 85 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of Ndele.

“The diamond business is now forbidden to anyone who is not with Seleka,” said one local official who fled from Sangba. The official refused to be identified because of security concerns.

Even more worrisome, the Seleka members are — according to several people who fled Sangba — being aided by armed fighters from neighboring Sudan known as the Janjaweed, who were accused of committing atrocities against civilians in Darfur. Sudan, whose leader is wanted by the International Criminal Court, is not part of the Kimberley Process. Observers fear many of Central African Republic’s illicit diamonds are being funneled into Sudan.

The residents spoke to AP only on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the rebels, who roam through the area’s towns in stolen vehicles full of rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons.

The Kimberley Process system for certifying the origin of diamonds is meant to inform customers about where the stones originated. Diamonds are exported with certificates saying they are conflict-free. Countries found to be in violation cannot legally export their gems to the major diamond cutting hubs of Belgium, Israel and India. The case of Central African Republic could become the most significant test in years of the Kimberley Process.

The Kimberley Process has initiated procedures that could lead to a temporary suspension of Central African Republic until a review mission can be sent, Kimberley Process chair Welile Nhlapo told a meeting of the diamond industry in Tel Aviv on Monday.

“The developments in the Central African Republic inform us that there are still situations whereconflict diamonds continue to fuel rebel activities to remove elected official governments,” Nhlapo told the meeting of the World Diamond Council.

Members in the initiative are set to respond by Friday to the proposed suspension, which would go into effect shortly thereafter if approved by majority, Nhlapo told the AP on the sidelines of the meeting.

Nigeria: Fighting between Nigeria’s military and Islamic extremists killed at least 185 people in a fishing community in the nation’s far northeast, officials said Sunday, an attack that saw insurgents fire rocket-propelled grenades and soldiers spray machine-gun fire into neighborhoods filled with civilians.

The fighting in Baga began Friday and lasted for hours, sending people fleeing into the arid scrublands surrounding the community on Lake Chad. By Sunday, when government officials finally felt safe enough to see the destruction, homes, businesses and vehicles were burned throughout the area.

The assault marks a significant escalation in the long-running insurgency Nigeria faces in its predominantly Muslim north, with Boko Haram extremists mounting a coordinated assault on soldiers using military-grade weaponry. The killings also mark one of the deadliest incidents ever involving Boko Haram.

Authorities had found and buried at least 185 bodies as of Sunday afternoon, said Lawan Kole, a local government official in Baga. He spoke haltingly to Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima in the Kanuri language of Nigeria’s northeast, surrounded by still-frightened villagers.

Officials could not offer a breakdown of civilian casualties versus those of soldiers and extremist fighters. Many of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition in fires that razed whole sections of the town, residents said. Those killed were buried as soon as possible, following local Muslim tradition.

Brig. Gen. Austin Edokpaye, also on the visit, did not dispute the casualty figures. Edokpaye said Boko Haram extremists used heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the assault, which began after soldiers surrounded a mosque they believed housed members of the radical Islamic extremist network Boko Haram. Extremists earlier had killed a military officer, the general said.

Edokpaye said extremists used civilians as human shields during the fighting — implying that soldiers opened fire in neighborhoods where they knew civilians lived.

“When we reinforced and returned to the scene the terrorists came out with heavy firepower, including (rocket-propelled grenades), which usually has a conflagration effect,” the general said.

However, local residents who spoke to an Associated Press journalist who accompanied the state officials said soldiers purposefully set the fires during the attack. Violence by security forces in the northeast targeting civilians has been widely documented by journalists and human rights activists. A similar raid in Maiduguri, Borno state’s capital, in October after extremists killed a military officer saw soldiers kill at least 30 civilians and set fires across a neighborhood.

Sunday afternoon, the burned bodies of cattle and goats still filled the streets in Baga. Bullet holes marred burned buildings. Fearful residents of the town had begun packing to leave with their remaining family members before nightfall, despite Shettima trying to convince some to stay.

“Everyone has been in the bush since Friday night; we started returning back to town because the governor came to town today,” grocer Bashir Isa said. “To get food to eat in the town now is a problem because even the markets are burnt. We are still picking corpses of women and children in the bush and creeks.”

The Islamic insurgency in Nigeria grew out of a 2009 riot led by Boko Haram members in Maiduguri that ended in a military and police crackdown that killed some 700 people. The group’s leader died in police custody in an apparent execution. From 2010 on, Islamic extremists have engaged in hit-and-run shootings and suicide bombings, attacks that have killed at least 1,548 people before Friday’s attack, according to an AP count.

In January 2012, Boko Haram launched a coordinated attack in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city, that killed at least 185 people as well. However, casualty numbers remain murky in Nigeria, where security and government officials often downplay figures.

Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sacrilege” in the Hausa language of Nigeria’s north, has said it wants its imprisoned members freed and Nigeria to adopt strict Shariah law across the multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. While the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan has started a committee to look at the idea of offering an amnesty deal to extremist fighters, Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau has dismissed the idea out of hand in messages.

The Boko Haram network, which analysts and diplomats say has loose links to two other al-Qaida-aligned groups in Africa, has splintered into other groups as well. Its command-and-control structure also remains unclear. Recent Internet videos featuring Shekau have shown him with fighters carrying military weapons he said were stolen during attacks on Nigeria’s military. Those weapons have included rocket-propelled grenades and other heavy weapons.

Fighters suspected to belong to Boko Haram also have been seen in northern Mali, where heavily armed Islamic extremists took power in the weeks following a military coup in that West African nation. Analysts also have worried that Boko Haram may get its hands on weapons smuggled out of Libya following its recent civil war.

Despite the deployment of more soldiers and police to northern Nigeria, the nation’s weak central government has been unable to stop the killings. Meanwhile, violent atrocities committed by security forces against the local civilian population only fuels rage in the region.

BOSTON: Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lay hospitalized in serious condition under heavy guard Saturday — apparently in no shape to be interrogated — as investigators tried to establish the motive for the deadly attack and the scope of the plot.

People across the Boston area breathed easier the morning after Tsarnaev, 19, was pulled, wounded and bloody, from a tarp-covered boat in a Watertown backyard. The capture came at the end of a tense day that began with his 26-year-old brother,Tamerlan, dying in a gunbattle with police.

There was no immediate word on when Tsarnaev might be charged and what those charges would be. The twin bombings killed three people and wounded more than 180.

The most serious charge available to federal prosecutors would be the use of a weapon of mass destruction to kill people, which carries a possible death sentence. Massachusetts does not have the death penalty.

President Barack Obama said there are many unanswered questions about the bombing, including whether the Tsarnaev brothers — ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade and lived in the Boston area — had help from others. The president urged people not to rush judgment about their motivations.

U.S. officials said an elite interrogation team would question the Massachusetts college student without reading him his Miranda rights, something that is allowed on a limited basis when the public may be in immediate danger, such as instances in which bombs are planted and ready to go off.

The American Civil Liberties Union expressed concern about that possibility. Executive Director Anthony Romero said the legal exception applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is “not an open-ended exception” to the Miranda rule, which guarantees the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney.

The federal public defender’s office in Massachusetts said it has agreed to represent Tsarnaev once he is charged. Miriam Conrad, public defender for Massachusetts, said he should have a lawyer appointed as soon as possible because there are “serious issues regarding possible interrogation.”

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Saturday afternoon that Tsarnaev was in serious but stable condition and was probably unable to communicate. Tsarnaev was at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where 11 victims of the bombing were still being treated.

“I, and I think all of the law enforcement officials, are hoping for a host of reasons the suspect survives,” the governor said after a ceremony at Fenway Park to honor the victims and survivors of the attack. “We have a million questions, and those questions need to be answered.”

The all-day manhunt Friday brought the Boston area to a near standstill and put people on edge across the metropolitan area.

The break came around nightfall when a homeowner in Watertown saw blood on his boat, pulled back the tarp and saw a bloody Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding inside, police said. After an exchange of gunfire, he was seized and taken away in an ambulance.

Raucous celebrations erupted in and around Boston, with chants of “USA! USA!” Residents flooded the streets in relief four days after the two pressure-cooker bombs packed with nails and other shrapnel went off.

Michael Spellman said he bought tickets to Saturday’s Red Sox game at Fenway Park to help send a message to the bombers.

“They’re not going to stop us from doing things we love to do,” he said, sitting a few rows behind home plate. “We’re not going to live in fear.”

During the long night of violence leading up to the capture, the Tsarnaev brothers killed an MIT police officer, severely wounded another lawman and took part in a furious shootout and car chase in which they hurled explosives at police from a large homemade arsenal, authorities said.

“We’re in a gunfight, a serious gunfight. Rounds are going and then all of the sudden they see something being thrown at them and there’s a huge explosion,” Watertown Police Chief Edward Deveau said Saturday of the melee.

The chief said one of the explosives was the same type used during the Boston Marathon attack, and authorities later recovered a pressure cooker lid that had embedded in a car down the street. He said the suspects also tossed two grenades before Tamerlan ran out of ammunition and police tackled him.

But while handcuffing him, officers had to dive out of the way as Dzhokhar drove the carjacked Mercedes at them, Deveau said. The sport utility vehicle dragged Tamerlan’s body down the block, he said. Police initially tracked the escaped suspect by a blood trail he left behind a house after abandoning the Mercedes, negotiating his surrender hours later after an area resident saw blood and found the suspect huddled in his boat.

Chechnya, where the Tsarnaev family has roots, has been the scene of two wars between Russian forces and separatists since 1994. That spawned an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings in Russia and the region, although not in the West.

Investigators have not offered a motive for the Boston attack. But in interviews with officials and those who knew the Tsarnaevs, a picture has emerged of the older one as someone embittered toward the U.S., increasingly vehement in his Muslim faith and influential over his younger brother.

The Russian FSB intelligence service told the FBI in 2011 about information that Tamerlan Tsarnaevwas a follower of radical Islam, two law enforcement officials said Saturday.

According to an FBI news release, a foreign government said that Tamerlan Tsarnaev appeared to be strong believer and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the U.S. for travel to the Russian region to join unspecified underground groups.

The FBI did not name the foreign government, but the two officials said it was Russia. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the matter publicly.

The FBI said that in response, it interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and relatives, and did not find any domestic or foreign terrorism activity. The bureau said it looked into such things as his telephone and online activity, his travels and his associations with others.

An uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers said he had a falling-out with Tamerlan over the man’s increased commitment to Islam.

BOSTON—A late-night police chase and shootout has ended with one marathon bombing suspect dead and another on the run here, Boston Police commissioner Ed Davis said early Friday morning. One police officer was killed and a transit officer seriously wounded during the pursuit.

At sunrise, Gov. Patrick Deval ordered a shutdown of all public transit as safety measure.

Federal agents swarmed neighboring Watertown after local police were involved in a car chase and shootout with the men identified Thursday by the FBI as Suspect 1 and Suspect 2. During the pursuit, officers could be heard on police radio traffic describing the men as having grenades and other explosives.

The made-for-movie mayhem began at approximately 10:30 p.m. Thursday when police said the bombing suspects robbed a 7-Eleven store in Cambridge, police said. Minutes later, an MIT campus officer responding to the call was shot and killed. The terror suspects then fled in a stolen Mercedes-Benz, but were quickly spotted in Watertown where they exchanged dozens of rounds of gunfire with patrol officers.

Suspect 1 was shot by police and brought to Beth Israel Medical Center. He arrived at the hospital under cardiac arrest with multiple gunshot wounds and blast-like injuries to his chest. The second suspect fled on foot, leading to a tense manhunt that is still underway at this hour.

“We believe this to be a terrorist,” Davis told reporters at a hastily arranged press conference in Watertown. “We believe this to be a man who has come here to kill people. We need to get him into custody.”

A transit officer was seriously wounded during the exchange of gunfire, officials said.

The FBI has yet to publicly confirm a connection between the events in Watertown and the twin explosions that killed 3 people and injured 170 others at the Boston Marathon on Monday. But according to Boston Police, the suspect who remained at large was the “one in the white hat” seen in the photos released by the bureau on Thursday.

In a radio alert sent issued to fellow officers, the suspect was described as a “white male with dark complexion or a Middle Eastern male with thick curly hair wearing a charcoal gray hooded sweatshirt … possibly with an assault rifle and explosives.” Police in Watertown, Newton, Brighton and Cambridge were put on high alert as the suspect was said to be armed with a “long gun.”

“We are aware of the law enforcement activity in the greater Boston area,” Boston FBI spokesman Greg Comcowich said in a statement to Yahoo News. “The situation is ongoing. We are working with local authorities to determine what happened.”

Worried residents in Watertown, a suburb about 10 miles from downtown Boston, were ordered to stay indoors and turn off their cell phones out of fear that they could trigger improvised explosive devices.

N’DJAMENA, Chad: Chadian President Idriss Debyannounced Friday that Chadian troops fighting to dislodge an al-Qaida affiliate in northern Mali killed one of the group’s leading commanders, Abou Zeid.

The death of the Algerian warlord, a feared radical leader of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb behind the kidnapping of several Westerners, could not immediately be verified. His death would be a big blow to his group and its growing influence in North and West Africa.

Officials in Mali and in France, which is leading an international military intervention in Mali against Islamic extremists linked to AQIM, could not confirm the death. The White House had no immediate reaction to the announcement. The U.S. has offered drones and intelligence help to the French-led operation.

The Chadian president’s spokesman said that Deby announced the death of Abou Zeid during a ceremony Friday for Chadian soldiers killed in fighting in Mali.

Deby said, “It was our soldiers who killed two big Islamist chiefs in northern Mali,” including Abou Zeid, according to the spokesman.

The spokesman insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak ahead of an announcement on state television on the matter. It was unclear when it was expected, and the spokesman gave no further details.

Chadian television showed images of Friday’s tribute to the fallen soldiers from Chad, a row of coffins draped with the blue, yellow and red flags, and dignitaries from Chad and neighboring countries.

Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, who led one of the most violent brigades of al-Qaida’s North African franchise and helped lead the extremist takeover of northern Mali, was thought to be 47 years old.

He was a pillar of the southern realm of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, responsible for the death of at least two European hostages. He was believed to be holding four French nationals kidnapped two years ago at a uranium mine in Niger. The fate of those hostages, working for French company Areva, was unclear Friday night.

Abou Zeid held a Frenchman released in February 2010, and another who was executed that July. He’s also been linked to the execution of a British hostage in 2009.

The French military moved into Mali on Jan. 11 to push back militants linked to Abou Zeid and other extremist groups who had imposed harsh Islamic rule in the vast country and who were seen as an international terrorist threat. The extremists took control over northern Mali in a power vacuum after a coup last year, and had started moving toward the capital.

France is trying to rally other African troops to help in the military campaign, since Mali’s military is weak and poor. Chadian troops have offered the most robust reinforcement.

For the past 10 days, French military, along with Chadian forces, have been locked in a weeklong battle against extremists in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains of northern Mali that has left scores dead.

A French presidential aide said the French government would not comment on the Chadian president’s announcement. Earlier, French President Francois Hollande said: “Information is circulating. It is not for me to confirm this, because we need to follow through the operation to the end.”

Earlier reports had said Abou Zeid was killed by French forces, which would be a victory for France. But French officials have been very cautious about the claims of his death, especially because of the number of hostages believed scattered around the same region where the fighting is under way.

French military spokesman Col. Thierry Burkhard said Friday night that French and Chadian soldiers are working together in a general sense but they are not always “side by side” in every operation. So he could not say whether French soldiers were involved in the operation that Deby says killed Abou Zeid.

Abou Zeid was a powerful and shadowy figure, and mystery surrounds even his real name. Along with his nom de guerre, Abou Zeid had an alias, Mosab Abdelouadoud, and nicknames, the emir of the south and the little emir, due to his diminutive size. But the Algerian press has raised questions about his legal identity — Abid Hamadou or Mohamed Ghedir.

He was viewed as a disciplined radical with close ties to the overall AQIM boss, Abdelmalek Droukdel, who oversees operations from his post in northern Algeria.

Abou Zeid fought with a succession of Islamist insurgency movements trying to topple the Algerian state since 1992. He reportedly joined the brutal, and now defunct, Armed Islamic Group that massacred whole villages in northern Algeria, then joined the Salafist Group for Call and Combat that morphed into al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in 2006.

An Algerian court tried him in absentia in January 2012, convicting him of belonging to an international terrorist group and sentencing him to life in prison.

Abou Zeid was an arch rival of Moktar Belmoktar, known as “the one-eyed sheik” after he lost an eye in combat in Afghanistan. Belmoktar’s profile soared after a mid-January attack on a huge Algerian gas plant and a mass hostage-taking which left 37 hostages and 29 attackers dead.

The two of them spent years building up the AQIM presence in Mali, but it was Abou Zeid who was considered the crueler of the two. After the militants took over Mali’s north, Abou Zeid took control of the fabled city of Timbuktu, meting out justice according to his extremist view of Islamic law.

Pounding by French forces in January quickly pushed Islamists out of major cities, including Timbuktu, and to the rocky desert in the northeast.