Kim Hjelmgaard

USA TODAY

Adnan Shukrijumah, al-Qaeda's chief of global operations and the senior militant linked to a plot to bomb New York's subway system, was killed in a raid Saturday in Pakistan's lawless tribal region, that country's military said.

Shukrijumah was indicted in the U.S. over the 2008 plot. Attorney General Eric Holder called it one of the most dangerous plots since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Shukrijumah, 39, held a position that once belonged to Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The FBI lists the Saudi as a "most wanted" terrorist and had offered up to a $5 million reward for his capture.

After the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Shukrijumah studied at a community college in Florida but when the FBI showed up to arrest him as a material witness to a terrorism case in 2003, he already had left the country.

U.S. prosecutors charged Shukrijumah recruited three men in 2008 to receive training for the subway attack in Pakistan. Those men later returned to the U.S., where they settled on a plot to blow themselves up during rush hour, according to testimony in federal court.

Contributing: Associated Press