A senior al-Qaeda leader has been killed in a Predator drone missile strike in north-west Pakistan, US officials said. The officials told NBC News that the attack using Hellfire missiles had taken place in the last few days."Merry Christmas.....KABOOM!"
They said the target was not the network's Saudi leader Osama bin Laden or his Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.
So, a Number 3 or lower.
Always the Number 3 ...
The officials told the US network that the killing followed an acceleration of operations targeting al-Qaeda leaders over the past weeks.
North-west Pakistan has seen a surge in US strikes, which fan anti-Americanism in the nuclear-armed Muslim country, since President Barack Obama took office.
Warmonger that he is...
They have contributed to putting the country on the front line of the war on al-Qaeda. The government in Islamabad is under increasing Western pressure to not only target Taliban groups attacking Pakistan, but also al-Qaeda-linked fighters and the militants who cross over the border and target foreign troops in Afghanistan.
Since August 2008, at least 65 such strikes have killed around 625 people, although it is difficult to confirm the precise identity of many of the victims given that the remote region is largely closed to outsiders.
and given that what is left is hard to identify without a microscope