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January 19, 2006
Pakistan: Top Al-Qaeda Islamist Killed In US Airstrike, Claims ABC
We reported on the airstrike made against a house in the village of Damadola in Pakistan, about six kilometers from the Afghanistan border, on Friday January 13. Three houses were destroyed in the attack, believed to have been carried out by unmanned US Predator drones. 18 people, including women and children, were killed in the blast.
The issue caused diplomatic friction between the US and Pakistan, and sparked nationwide protests, with threats of more to come. The intended target of the missile strike had apparently been Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden.
As in an earlier incident in which an al-Qaeda top operative, third in command Abu Hamza Rabia, was killed in Haisori village, North Waziristan, by a supposed US airstrike, there have been contradictory claims about the attack on Damadola village.
At first, Pakistani authorities claimed that all the victims were innocent local villagers. Then intelligence officers leaked claims that Ayman al-Zawahiri had indeed been invited to the house for a meal at the time of the attack, but had not attended. He had, however, sent representatives. Some people had claimed no "foreigners" were among the dead, but others claimed 5 or so were among those killed, or even 11. By Sunday night, a senior Pakistani official confirmed that "foreigners" had been reported in the area at the time of the attack.
Now, a scoop by ABC News, also covered by Reuters AlertNet and Radio New Zealand claims that one those killed in Friday's airstrike was al-Qaeda's senior chemist. Egyptian born Midhat Mursi al-Sayid 'Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, was a senior al-Qaeda explosives and poisons trainer.
ABC states that Pakistani officials believe 52 year old Midhat Mursi was one of four senior al-Qaeda members present at what appears to have been a terror summit in the village of Damadola on Friday morning.
As well as being an expert in explosives and chemical weaponry, Midhat Mursi was also an effective trainer of jihadists. Under his alias Abu Khabab he ran terror training classes in Derunta, Afghanistan until the US invasion of 2001. Here he had instructed hundreds of trainees in poisons and explosives.
According to former FBI agent and terror consultant Jack Cloonan: "He's the man who trained the shoe bomber Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, as well as hundreds of others."
The United States Rewards for Justice scheme has offered up to $5 million as a reward for Midhat Mursi's capture.
According to Yahoo News another individual said to have been killed in the Damadola airstrike was Abdul Rehman Al-Misri al Maghribi. He was a son-in-law of Ayman al-Zawahiri, who had been invited to attend the meeting, and responsible for al Qaeda's media department.
A third man named as being killed in the blast is Abu Obaidah al Misri, al-Qaeda's regional commander for Afghanistan's eastern province of Kunar. None of the three individuals identified above have been officially confirmed as dead by the Pakistani authorities.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at January 19, 2006 12:36 AM
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