From Reuters
Senior al Qaeda figures believed killed in US strike
Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:54 AM ET
By Simon Cameron-Moore
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - 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 U.S. airstrike last week, Pakistani intelligence sources said on Thursday.
Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed acknowledged that "a few militants" had died in Friday's attack, which also killed 18 civilians, but said their bodies had not been recovered and their identity was under investigation.
However, intelligence sources said they believed they knew the names of three men killed in the attack, which U.S. officials say was aimed at al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri.
Pakistani intelligence sources said al-Zawahri was not at the scene of the attack. One of the dead was thought to be his son-in-law, Abdul Rehman Al-Misri al Maghribi, who was responsible for al Qaeda's media department.
Another was Midhat Mursi al-Sayid 'Umar, an expert in explosives and poisons. The U.S. government has posted a $5 million reward for him.
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.
"If this person is gone, it is significant. His loss, and the loss of people like him, would certainly be a blow to al Qaeda in the region," said a U.S. counter-terrorism official, who asked not to be identified.
The third man identified by Pakistani intelligence officers was Abu Obaidah al Misri, al Qaeda's chief of operations in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province, where U.S. and Afghan forces regularly come under militant attack.
INVITED TO FEAST
The senior administrator in the Bajaur tribal district, where the attack took place, said on Tuesday that four or five militants from among 10-12 foreigners invited to a feast at the village of Damadola were thought to have been killed.
"This appears to have been a meeting of the military committee of al Qaeda," said Rohan Gunaratna, author of "Inside al Qaeda" and security analyst at Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies.
"Almost all the key Egyptian leaders were present, and it would most likely have been chaired by Zawahri, except it seems he didn't show up for some reason," Gunaratna said.
One Pakistani intelligence official said Khalid Habib, head of al Qaeda's operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, may have also have been among the dead. But another official said there was no evidence of this.
The officials said they were still trying to identify one other al Qaeda member believed to have been killed.
They said pro-militant Muslim clerics removed the bodies from the scene after the 3 a.m. strike.
Habib, according to Gunaratna, would be a very significant catch, as he had probably risen to No. 3 in the network after the capture and killing of the previous two occupants of that slot last year.
Pakistan is a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, but news of the civilian deaths prompted a rare formal protest by Islamabad and demonstrations in several towns and cities.
Friday's strike was the third believed to have been carried out since May by CIA-operated Predator drone aircraft in Pakistani tribal lands near the Afghan border.
Abu Hamza Rabia, an Egyptian said to have been al Qaeda's No. 3 commander, was killed in December, and a known al Qaeda bombmaker, Haitham al-Yemeni, was killed in May.
In both cases, Pakistan denied the men were killed by U.S. missiles. But witnesses found U.S. missile parts at the scene, and in Rabia's case, said they had seen the thin white drone.
Despite Pakistan's diplomatic protest, intelligence sources believe the United States has Pakistan's tacit agreement to conduct such operations on its territory.
(With reporting by Zeeshan Haider)
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