Senior al-Qaeda figures believed killed in US strike
Reuters, Islamabad
An al-Qaeda bomb expert with a $5 million bounty on his head and a son-in-law of the group's No. 2 were among four militants believed killed by a US airstrike last week, Pakistani intelligence sources said yesterday. There was no official confirmation, however, and the bodies of militants have not been recovered from the remote tribal area close to the Afghan border which was targeted last Friday. Eighteen villagers were killed in the attack, prompting Pakistan to protest against the US action. Intelligence sources said they believed they knew the names of three men killed in the attack, which US officials say was aimed at al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri. One of the dead was said to be Abdul Rehman Al-Misri al Maghribi, a son-in-law of Zawahri. Maghribi was responsible for al-Qaeda's media department. Another was Midhat Mursi al-Sayid 'Umar, an expert in explosives and poisons who carried a $5 million US bounty on his head under the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Rewards for Justice programme. Pakistani officials gave a slightly different spelling for the name, but the FBI says 'Umar ran a training camp at Derunta in Afghanistan and since 1999 had proliferated training manuals containing crude recipes for chemical and biological weapons. ABC News and the New York Times, citing Pakistani officials, also reported that the 52-year-old Egyptian had been killed, although there was no official confirmation.
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Workers of Pasban organisation, a student wing of the fundamentalist Jamaat-i-Islami party chant anti-US slogans during a demonstration in Peshawar yesterday to protest against the killing of 18 tribesmen on January 13 in an air raid at the remote tribal region bordering Afghanistan. PHOTO: AFP |
