Top Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan killed: officials
2009-01-09

Category Al Qaeda Bombing Taliban Nations Pakistan Afghanistan Tanzania Kenya City Islamabad Category Regions Regions Asia Africa People Benazir Bhutto Event Anti-terror War in Pakistan Source (AFP)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - The head of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and his lieutenant were killed last week in a suspected US drone strike in a tribal area on the Afghan border, local Pakistani officials confirmed on Friday.

The men killed were Kenyan national Usama al-Kini, described as Al-Qaeda's chief of operations in Pakistan, and his Kenyan-born lieutenant Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, said the local officials, who asked not to be named.

Earlier a US counterterrorism official said the two men -- who were on the FBI's most wanted list in connection with the August 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania -- had been killed in recent days.

"There is every reason to believe that these two top terrorist figures are dead," the US official told AFP in Washington, adding that the pair were killed "within the last week" but without saying how they had died.

The Pakistani officials said the two men -- who each had five-million-dollar US bounties on their heads over the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa -- were among five killed in a missile strike in South Waziristan on January 1.

The New Year's Day strike, believed to have been carried out by an unmanned US aircraft, took place in the tribal district's Karikot area, local security officials said.

Senior security officials here said Al-Kini had been suspected of involvement in at least half a dozen attacks in Pakistan, including last year's suicide bombings at the Danish embassy and the Marriott hotel in Islamabad.

He is also believed to be linked to a failed October 2007 attempt to assassinate former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto. She was killed in a gun and suicide attack two months later.

Al-Kini, born Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam in Mombasa, was 32, according to the State Department's Rewards for Justice website (www.rewardsforjustice.net). Swedan's birth date is given on the website as either April 1960 or 1969.

The CIA declined to comment on the incident but an official told the Washington Post -- which first broke the story -- that the men were killed in a strike on a building being used for explosives training.

"They died preparing new acts of terror," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Both men were indicted in connection to the bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi for "murder of US nationals outside the United States; conspiracy to murder US nationals outside the United States; and attack on a federal facility resulting in death," according to Rewards for Justice.

The State Department website maintains lists of current reward offers for wanted persons designated as terrorists by the US government.

The lawless tribal areas in northwest Pakistan have been wracked by violence since hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda rebels sought refuge in the region after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban regime in late 2001.

Pakistan has repeatedly protested to the United States that the drone strikes violate its territorial sovereignty and deepen resentment among the 160 million people of the nuclear-armed Islamic nation.

President Asif Ali Zardari has promised zero tolerance for such violations, but some officials say there is a tacit understanding between the US and Pakistani militaries to allow such action.

A US drone attack in November killed Rashid Rauf, the alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot, as well as an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative, security officials have said.

More than two dozen similar strikes have been carried out since August 2008, killing more than 200 people, most of them militants.