US missile attack in Pakistan killed Al-Qaeda bomb
maker: report
WASHINGTON : A top Al-Qaeda bomb maker with a five million dollar
reward on his head was killed in last week's CIA missile strike in
Pakistan, ABC News reported Wednesday.
Pakistani officials identified him as Midhat Mursi, 52, also known
as Abu Khabab al-Masri, the US television network said.
US officials were unable to confirm the report, and appeared to
have doubts that he has been definitively identified.
"It's an open ended question on who was at the site of the attack,"
said an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
But Mursi was believed to have been in the immediate vicinity of
the strike, which targeted a gathering of senior al-Qaeda figures
in the village of Damadola in a tribal area in northwestern
Pakistan.
ABC News cited Pakistani officials as saying Mursi was one of three
known Al-Qaeda leaders present at a meeting in the village of
Damadola that was targeted in a missile attack late Thursday or
early Friday.
The Pakistanis said he was on a guest list for the gathering, ABC
said.
Among those who initially were believed to be attending was Ayman
al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two, but his fate was not known and
it was unclear if he was ever there.
Pakistani officials said Tuesday that four or five "foreign
terrorists" were killed in the attack, which was carried out late
Thursday or early Friday by armed CIA-controlled Predator
drones.
"Obviously a decision along these lines (to launch an attack) is
not taken lightly, and you can be assured it was based on very
solid information," said a US counter-terrorism official, who asked
not to be identified.
Eighteen civilians also were reported killed in the strike,
prompting large protests over the weekend in Pakistan.
Pakistani officials said they found 18 freshly dug graves but two
were empty.
On Tuesday, the administrator of the Bajur tribal agency said two
local militants had removed the bodies of foreign terrorists after
the air strike.
If Mursi has been killed, the US official said, "that would be a
very significant development."
A five million dollar reward for Mursi's capture is posted on a
State Department list of wanted Al-Qaeda leaders.
The State Department posting says Mursi operated a training camp in
Derunta, Afghanistan where hundreds of mujahideen were trained in
the use of poisons and explosives.
He produced training manuals with recipes for crude chemicals and
biological weapons, some of which were recovered by US forces in
Afghanistan, it said.
The US official said Mursi also was associated with video-taped
poison gas experiments on dogs in Afghanistan. - AFP/ch