A failed January 13 bid to assassinate al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri in Pakistan was the latest strike in the "targeted killing" program, a classified initiative that officials say has broadened as the network splintered and fled Afghanistan.

The strike against Zawahiri killed as many as 18 civilians, many of them women and children, and triggered protests in Pakistan. Similar US attacks using unmanned Predator aircraft equipped with Hellfire missiles have angered citizens and political leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.

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Little is known about the program. The Bush administration has refused to discuss how many strikes it has made, how many people have died, or how it chooses targets.

No US officials are willing to speak openly about the program, though several have confirmed at least 19 occasions since September 11, 2001, on which Predators fired Hellfire missiles on suspects, including 10 in Iraq in one month last year.

The Predator strikes have killed at least four senior al-Qaeda leaders but also many civilians, and it is not known how often they missed targets.

Critics of the program dispute its legality under US and international law and say it is administered by the Central Intelligence Agency and with little oversight.

Lee Strickland, a former CIA counsel who retired in 2004 from the agency's Senior Intelligence Service, confirmed that the Predator program had grown along with the spread of al- Qaeda commanders. The CIA believes they are branching out to gain recruits, financing and influence.

Many groups of militants are believed to be in lawless pockets of the Middle East, Asia and Africa, where it is perilous for US troops to try to capture them and difficult to discern the leaders.

"Paradoxically, as a result of our success the target has become even more decentralized, even more diffused and presents a more difficult target no question about that," said Strickland, now director of the Center for Information Policy at the University of Maryland.

Past and present intelligence officials said they could not disclose the countries that could be subject to Predator strikes. But the presence of al- Qaeda or its affiliates has been documented in many nations, including Indonesia, Somalia and Morocco.

High-ranking US and allied counter- terrorism officials said the program's expansion is not merely geographic: it has grown from targeting a small number of al-Qaeda commanders after the September 11 attacks to a more loosely defined effort to kill possibly scores of suspected terrorists.

"We have the plans in place to do them globally," said a former US counter-terrorism official. "In most cases, we need the approval of the host country to do them. However, there are a few countries where the president has decided that we can whack someone without the approval or knowledge of the host government."

The CIA and the Pentagon have deployed at least several dozen of the Predator drones throughout Iraq, Afghanistan and along the borders of Pakistan. The CIA also has sent the remote-controlled aircraft over Yemen and other countries believed to be al- Qaeda havens, particularly those without a strong government or military with which the United States can work in tandem.

The Predator, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems of San Diego, is a slender craft, eight-meter long with a 15m wingspan. It makes a clearly audible buzzing sound, and can hover above a target for many hours and fly as low as 15,000 feet to get sharp reconnaissance footage. They are often operated by CIA or Pentagon officials at computer consoles in the United States.

The drones were designed for surveillance and have been used for that purpose since at least the mid-1990s.

After the September 11 attacks, President George W Bush ordered a rapid escalation of a project to arm the Predators with missiles - an effort that had been mired in bureaucratic squabbles and technical glitches.

Now the Predator is an integral part of the military's counter-insurgency effort, especially in Iraq. But the CIA also runs a more secretive and more controversial program that targets terrorists outside combat zones.

The CIA does not even acknowledge that such a targeted-killing program exists, and some attacks have been explained away as car bombings or other incidents.

It is not known how many militants or bystanders have been killed by Predators, but anecdotal evidence suggests a significant number.

In some cases, the destruction was so complete that it was impossible to establish who was killed or even how many people.

Among al-Qaeda leaders killed in strikes were military commander Mohammed Atef in Afghanistan in November 2001 and Qaed Sinan Harithi, a suspected mastermind of the bombing of the US destroyer Cole in Yemen, in 2002.

Last year, Predators killed two al- Qaeda leaders in Pakistan: Haitham Yemeni in May and Abu Hamza Rabia in December, one month after another missile strike missed him.

The attack on Rabia in North Waziristan also killed his Syrian bodyguards and the 17-year-old son and the 8-year-old nephew of the owner of the house that was struck, according to a US official and Amnesty International, which has lodged complaints with the Bush administration following each suspected Predator strike.

Another apparent Predator missile strike killed a former Taleban commander, Nek Mohammed, in South Waziristan along with five others in 2004. LOS ANGELES TIMES