3 Top al-Qaida Operatives Believe Killed By MUNIR AHMAD, Associated Press Writer
14 minutes ago
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A Pakistani security official on Thursday said at least three top al-Qaida operatives were believed killed in a U.S. missile strike last week, including an explosives expert on the U.S. most-wanted list and a close relative of the terror network's No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri.
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A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he's not authorized to speak to media, said Egyptian Midhat Mursi was among the three top al-Qaida figures who were present in Damadola village at the time of the attack and whose bodies were believed to have been taken away by sympathizers.
The U.S. Justice Department says on its Web site that Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, is an expert in explosives and poisons who operated a terrorist training camp at Derunta, near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.
The Web site also says Mursi has written training manuals containing recipes for crude chemical and biological weapons, some of which were recovered by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The site says Mursi's exact whereabouts are unknown but adds that he may be residing in Pakistan, and offers $5 million for information leading to his arrest.
The Pakistani official named two other foreign militants as suspected killed in the missile strike: Abu Ubaida, whom he said was the main operations chief for al-Qaida in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province, which lies opposite Pakistan's Bajur tribal region where Damadola is located; and Abdul Rehman al-Misri, a close relative of al-Zawahri, possibly his son-in-law.
He stressed that their bodies have not been found.
"We do not have any evidence to prove that they have been killed, but we have indications that they were there and were among those bodies that were taken away," the official said, declining to elaborate.
A second Pakistani security official confirmed that security agencies were investigating the three men as possible victims of the air strike Friday which officials have said targeted but missed al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top aide.
Officials say the attack also killed 18 local residents.
Pentagon officials said they had no information on the reported identities of the dead and CIA spokesman Tom Crispell said the agency could not comment.
The New York Times and ABC also reported that al-Zawahri's son-in-law was believed killed in the strike, but provided a different identity.
Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the government believed some foreigners were killed in the attack, but authorities had not retrieved their bodies so their identities have not been confirmed by DNA tests.
"As far as our information is concerned, we confirm that there were some foreigners who were killed," Ahmed said. "But regarding their names, we are investigating."
Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the bodies may have been taken by a local pro-Taliban cleric, Maulana Faqir Mohammed, who also is being hunted by authorities.
Provincial authorities said sympathizers took the bodies of four or five foreign militants to bury them in the mountains near the Afghan border, thereby preventing their identification.
"Efforts are under way to investigate further," said Shah Zaman Khan, director-general of media relations for Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
He said authorities were also looking for Faqir Mohammed and another prominent pro-Taliban cleric accused of harboring militants. Both men were allegedly in Damadola and survived the assault.
Intelligence officials say al-Zawahri is thought to have sent some of his aides in his place to an Islamic holiday dinner to which he'd been invited in Damadola on the night of the attack.
Hours after the attack, an Associated Press reporter visited the village, which consists of a half-dozen widely scattered houses on a hillside about four miles from the Afghan border.
Residents said then that all the dead were local people and no one had taken any bodies away. However, it appeared feasible that bodies or wounded could have been spirited away in the darkness after the attack, which took place at about 3 a.m.
Islamic custom dictates that bodies be buried as soon as possible, and the reporter saw 13 freshly filled graves with simple headstones and five empty graves alongside them ? apparently prepared for more dead. When the reporter returned the next day, the five empty graves were filled in, apparently because no more bodies had been found in the rubble.
The only tidbits of official information that have surfaced since then have come from provincial authorities, and they have yet to give a list of the dead. But Pakistani intelligence officials have said they also believe some of those killed were Pakistani militants and that their bodies were also removed from the scene.
A Pakistani army official has told the AP that some bodies were taken away for DNA tests ? information at odds with reports from provincial authorities. The federal government has not confirmed the report about DNA tests.
Pakistan maintains it was not given advance word of the airstrike, which was reportedly carried out by unmanned Predator drones flying from Afghanistan, and has condemned it as killing innocent civilians.
Thousands have taken to the streets in protest over the attack, denouncing the U.S. and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who ended Pakistan's support of the Taliban regime in late 2001 and has himself been targeted by al-Qaida attacks.
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Associated Press writers Matthew Pennington in Islamabad and Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
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