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| India-Pakistan |
| Marwan al-Suri, Abd Hadi al-Iraqi may also be among the Damadola dead |
| 2006-01-19 |
| wo al-Qaida militants reported missing and suspected killed in Friday's U.S. missile attack in Pakistan are key regional commanders along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Afghan and Pakistani analysts said. The administrator of Pakistan's Bajaur border district said Tuesday that four or five non-Pakistani militants had died -- along with 13 to 18 Pakistani residents -- in the missile attack on homes in the village of Damadola. Two of the dead may be an Egyptian known as Abu Ubaidah and a Syrian, Marwan As-Suri, said an Afghan source with links to al-Qaida. Abu Ubaidah, in his mid-40s, is deputy commander of al-Qaida forces in Kunar, a ruggedly mountainous province where U.S. troops fought offensives last year to clear out militants, said the source, who asked not to be identified. Kunar is one of three or four Afghan provinces where the war in Afghanistan remains at its most intensive -- and one reason is that guerrillas have been able to flee across the border into Pakistan. Marwan As-Suri, believed to be in his 30s, is a Syrian who recently had been appointed to head al-Qaida operations in part of the Pakistani areas bordering Kunar, the Afghan said. ABC News reported yesterday that a third militant, known as al-Qaida's master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert, also was killed. Pakistani authorities identified him as Midhat Mursi, 52, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri. ABC also cited Pakistani officials as saying Khalid Habib and Abdul Rehman al-Magrabi, both al-Qaida operations chiefs, were killed. The missiles destroyed three homes in Damadola hours after a dinner for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. Bajaur district's administrator, Fahim Wazir, said Tuesday that 10 to 12 non-Pakistani militants had been invited to the feast. Pakistani intelligence sources have told journalists in Pakistan that one invited guest who did not attend was al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri. U.S. officials, apparently concluding that Zawahri was present, ordered the attack, for the first news of the strike came from American intelligence sources in Washington who said al-Zawahri had been killed. According to the Afghan source, another important al-Qaida invitee to the dinner was Abdul Hadi Al-Iraqi, who reportedly has served as a liaison between al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida-backed guerrilla leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It was not clear whether Al-Iraqi attended and there was no report that he was missing. The valleys of Kunar and Bajaur are separated by a mountain ridge that rises to 10,000 feet. An Associated Press reporter who visited the main border crossing, in the Nava Pass, reported yesterday that "a rusting gate," manned by inattentive guards, "is all that divides the two countries." U.S. forces and the Afghan government are trying to reinforce the border by creating an elite force of local tribesmen to guard it. Both Kunar and Bajaur have deeply rooted Islamic militant groups that help make the area a haven for guerrillas of various groups. In Kunar, "I got them all," a U.S. Army commander, Lt. Col. Peter Munster, told the AP last summer. "Taliban, al-Qaida ... [Hezb-I-Islami, an Afghan guerrilla faction led by the the militant Gulbuddin Hekmatyar], foreign fighters, smugglers and other criminals. They are like the Mafia." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #3 "Pakistani intelligence sources have told journalists in Pakistan that one invited guest who did not attend was al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri. " Dose'nt this sound like what they claim the Jews did on 9/11. "No, you guys go ahead, this cough will be gone by tommorrow, meet ya then" |
| Posted by: plainslow 2006-01-19 08:47 |
| #2 mmmmm... no mention of the presence of fwuffy bunnies in the area as initial reports from the BBC suggested. |
| Posted by: Howard UK 2006-01-19 03:26 |
| #1 Every little bit helps. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-01-19 01:11 |