Pakistan said on Friday that it has no information that al Qaeda's chief of operations in the country had been killed in a recent drone strike in North Waziristan. Abu Hafs al Shahri, a Saudi national who had been serving as the senior figure in al Qaeda's central command, was the target of the drone strike which occurred within the last few days, two US officials said on Thursday. "We have no knowledge of that," said Pakistan military spokesman Major Gen. Athar Abbas. Officials in the tribal regions near the Afghan border also had no information on al Shahri. "We have neither heard of this man operating in this region, nor can we confirm his death," said one. U.S. officials reported the death of an al Qaeda figure identified as the terrorist network's chief of operations in Pakistan, the latest in what they called a series of significant blows to the terrorist network. Abu Hafs al-Shahri helped coordinate anti-American plots in the region and worked closely with Pakistani Taliban operatives to carry out attacks there, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told CNN Thursday. His cause of death was not disclosed, but the United States frequently uses armed aerial drones to target al Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan. Al-Shahri was seen as a possible successor to al Qaeda's second-in-command, Atiyah Abdul Rahman, who was killed in late August, the U.S. official said. Little else was immediately known about him. A senior Obama administration official said al-Shahri was killed earlier this week. Pakistani intelligence officials reported Sunday that a suspected drone strike in the tribal district of north Waziristan, near the rugged border with Afghanistan, had killed three people, but the targets of the strike were not immediately known. It's the latest in a series of losses among the top ranks of the terrorist network since the U.S. commando raid that killed its founder, Osama bin Laden, in May.And CIA Director David Petraeus, the former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, told the House Intelligence Committee that al Qaeda is far weaker today than it was 10 years ago. "Heavy losses to al Qaeda senior leadership appear to have created an important window of vulnerability for the core al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Petraeus said, and the United States will need a "sustained focused effort" to exploit the opportunity.