WASHINGTON -- A New Year's CIA strike in northern Pakistan killed two top al-Qaida terrorists long sought by the United States, including the man believed to be behind September's deadly suicide bombing at a Marriott hotel in the Pakistani capital, U.S. counterterrorism officials told The Washington Post yesterday.

Agency officials confirmed in recent days that the Jan. 1 missile strike killed a Kenyan national who used the name Usama al-Kini and was described as al-Qaida's chief of operations in Pakistan, along with his lieutenant, identified as Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, the sources said. Both men were associated with a string of suicide attacks in Pakistan in recent months and were also on the FBI's most-wanted list for ties to the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Mr. Kini, who had been pursued by U.S. law enforcement agencies on two continents for a decade, was the eighth senior al-Qaida leader killed in clandestine CIA strikes since July, the officials said.

The CIA declined comment on the reported deaths, citing the extreme secrecy of its operations on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where al-Qaida is believed to be based. But a U.S. counterterrorism official confirmed that the two died in a CIA strike on a building being used for explosives training. "They died preparing new acts of terror," said the official, who insisted on anonymity because the agency's actions are secret.

Details of the attack were sketchy, but counter-terrorism officials privy to classified reports said the two were killed by a 500-pound hellfire missiles fired by a CIA-operated pilotless drone aircraft. The strike occurred near Karikot in South Waziristan, a province in northern Pakistan's rugged autonomous tribal region long a haven for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

The province has often been targeted by Predator drones in recent months as part of a controversial and increasingly lethal campaign to destabilize the terrorist group and kill key operatives. The attacks, occurring at a rate of about once every three days, have drawn protests from Pakistan's government, but praise from top intelligence officials who say the strategy is forcing al-Qaida into the open. CIA Director Michael Hayden, alluding to the strategy in November speech, said the United States had "taken the fight to the enemy."

Mr. Kini, whose given name was Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam, had trained terrorists in Africa in the 1990s and served as a central planner of the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, U.S. officials said. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in connection with those attacks and has been on the FBI's most-wanted list ever since.