U.S. officials announced Wednesday that Saad bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden, has likely been killed in Pakistan. The suspected cause is Hellfire missiles fired from a U.S. Predator drone sometime this year. A senior U.S. counterterrorism official told NPR that "without a body to conduct DNA tests on, it's hard to be completely sure," but U.S. spy agencies are "80 to 85 percent" certain that the junior bin Laden, who officials think was in his late 20s, is dead. Saad bin Laden reportedly spent years under house arrest in Iran before moving to Pakistan in 2008, former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell says. And while he was active in al Qaeda, he wasn't believed to be a major player—for this reason, he wasn't important enough to target personally, but was simply "in the wrong place at the wrong time." "We make a big deal out of him because of his last name," the counterterrorism official commented.
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