Al-Qaeda’s top leaders, including its new chief Ayman al-Zawahri, continue to burrow in Pakistan’s tribal areas, said a top US official as a Pakistani journalist warned that a dead Osama bin Laden is as dangerous as a living one.

Egyptian cleric al-Zawahri, who took over the organisation, after Osama’s killing last year by the US, “as well as other al-Qaeda leaders continue to burrow into areas of the FATA, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan”, said deputy national security adviser John Brennan.