KEY: Terror Leader Killed in Missile Strike?

By HABIBULLAH KHAN and MARTHA RADDATZ
Jan. 30, 2008

Pakistani intelligence sources say they believe a "high-value" al Qaeda target was killed in a missile strike yesterday in the country's tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

U.S. officials said there was no indication that the target was Osama bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al Zawahri, but one senior official told ABCNews.com the strike was aimed at one particular figure.

"We don't know whether we got him yet, we are sorting through it," the official said, indicating the intended target was a top leader of the terror group.

The official also ruled out as a target American al Qaeda Adam Gadahn, who appeared recently in a propaganda videotape.

"Gadahn may be recognizable to all of you, but he is really not that high up on the food chain in al Qaeda and not that important," the official said.

Pakistani officials initially said that 12 suspected militants had been killed in a midnight strike against a home in a village in North Waziristan, Khushali Torikhel.

Both the Pakistani military and the CIA have used missile attacks in the past to target top al Qaeda leaders.

The CIA uses missiles attached to the unmanned Predator aircraft which fly over Pakistani airspace with tacit Pakistani government approval.

SOURCE:

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MIRAMSHAH, Jan 29: Twelve suspected militants were killed in a missile attack on a house in Mirali tehsil in the troubled North Waziristan tribal region on Monday night, officials and witnesses said.

The missile hit a house in Khushali Torikhel village, about three kilometres off Mirali town.

It landed in the guestrooms and killed the 12 people.

Residents said the two guestrooms of the house were destroyed.
( They knew where the guestrooms were, which rooms to target them...G )

Local tribesmen immediately took the bodies in possession and buried them.

�A loud explosion rocked the area at 11.22pm and the people came out of their homes in panic,� a resident said.

He said that nobody exactly knew the occupants of the household and some foreigners might have been in the house.

The attack caused anger among tribesmen and students staged a protest in Miramshah. They chanted slogans against the government and the United States.

It could not be confirmed if the attack was carried out by the Pakistani security forces, but locals suspected that the missile had been fired from a drone.

The tribesmen warned that the attack could derail the ongoing talks with militants for restoration of peace in the restive region.

http://www.dawn.com/2008/01/30/top2.htm

http://snipurl.com/1ymf4

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Update:
7 Arabs among missile victims



By Our Correspondent


MIRAMSHAH, Jan 30: Militants retrieved and buried on Wednesday the bodies of 12 foreigners who had been killed in a missile attack on a residential compound in the Khushali Toorikhel area of North Waziristan on Monday night.

Local people said the identity of the militants killed in the attack remained unknown but according to unconfirmed reports seven of them were Arabs while the other five from central Asian.

The compound, located about three kilometres south of Mirali town, is owned by Abdus Sattar, a driver, who survived the attack.

A large number of militants had surrounded the site to get the bodies which the later buried in a local graveyard.

�Militants are still keeping the local people away from the place,� a villager told Dawn on phone. He said that unmanned air vehicles had hovered over the area on Wednesday.

The attack is a mystery because it is still not known who had fired the missile.

Some local people claimed that a drone had fired the missile but officials have been keeping quiet.

�I heard the sound of a plane just before the explosion,� said the man who identified himself as Zaheer Gul.

Several places in the North Waziristan have come under attack in the recent past. A house was attacked in Mosaki village in Mirali tehsil in December 2005 in which Al Qaeda�s operational commander Hamza Rabia was killed.

Meanwhile, militants attacked a security base in the Razmak sub-division of North Waziristan on Wednesday.

According to sources, two army soldiers were killed while another was injured in the afternoon attack.

They said that the militants had sneaked into Razmak from the adjacent Makin area where security forces had launched an operation against supporters of Baitullah Mehsud.

http://www.dawn.com/2008/01/31/top1.htm

http://snipurl.com/1yngn

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Al Qaeda Leader Killed in North Waziristan?

Yesterdays airstrike against a purported Taliban safe house in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal agency resulted in 12 killed just as the Taliban and the government are prepared to sign a new peace accord. But the strike may have claimed a high value al Qaeda leader, ABC News reported today.

Pakistani intelligence sources say they believe a "high-value" al Qaeda target was killed in a missile strike yesterday in the country's tribal region bordering Afghanistan. U.S. officials said there was no indication that the target was Osama bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al Zawahri, but one senior official told ABCNews.com the strike was aimed at one particular figure. "We don't know whether we got him yet, we are sorting through it," the official said, indicating the intended target was a top leader of the terror group.

While the Internet is abuzz with the possibility of Osama bin Laden or Ayman al Zawahiri being killed, the likelihood, as ABC News noted, is low. A series of airstrikes in the tribal areas from earlier 2006 onward has yielded only two mid-level a Qaeda operatives: Imam Asad, the chief trainer of the Black Guard, and Mohsin Matawalli Atwa, one of the architects of the 1998 attacks on the U.S. Embassies in Eastern Africa.

Anonymous Pakistani intelligence officials have misled the U.S. officials about the deaths of high value al Qaeda targets in the past. The Pakistanis claimed six senior al Qaeda operatives were killed in a strike in January 2006. These leaders were: Midhat Mursi al Sayid Umar (Abu Khabab), al Qaeda's WMD expert; Abdul Rahman al Maghribi, Zawahiri's son-in-law and an al Qaeda commander; Abu Obaidah al Masri, the Kunar, Afghanistan operations chief; Marwan al Suri, the Waziristan operations chief; Khalid Habib, the commander of southeastern Afghanistan commander; and Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, a member of al Qaeda's military committee. The Washington Post reported almost two years later that they had, in fact, survived the attack. Abd al Hadi al Iraqi was captured while trying to enter Iraq in April 2007.

I noted yesterday that the strike may have been designed to derail the new peace talks, as happened in October 2006 in Bajaur agency. At that time, the government was negotiating with Faqir Mohammed and his local Taliban forces in Bajaur. The government leveled a Taliban training camp at the Chingai madrassa, killing more than 80 Taliban. The peace talks with the Taliban in Bajaur were sabotaged, but a deal was cut six months later in March 2007.

Posted by Bill Roggio on January 30, 2008 08:07 PM | Permalink

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UPDATE:

Abu Laith al-Libi

The website, ekhlaas.org, said Libi had "fallen as a martyr", the Reuters news agency reports.

US intelligence agencies have been investigating reports that a top al-Qaeda figure was killed in the Afghan-Pakistan border area this week.

It follows a missile attack in Pakistan's North Waziristan area in which 12 militants were reported killed.

While Western counter-terrorism officials told the BBC they believed Libi to be dead, they would not discuss how he was killed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7220823.stm

http://snipurl.com/1yor4

Hat Tip: Howie at jawa

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Forum spy update:

The informed source that «Abu Zuhri Libyan» (whose real name is Ali Ammar Reguii, born 1972)

A source who spoke to «life» requirement to remain anonymous, leading to significantly «Islamic Fighting Group» Gaffar Dernawi allegedly killed with «Abu Zuhri» and more than ten others in the missile raid in the area of Mir Ali in North Waziristan. وقال إن الدرناوي كان «مسؤول محطة المقاتلة» في إيران، وانتقل إلى أفغانستان قبل نحو ثمانية شهور فقط، بعدما تقرر دمج «المقاتلة» في تنظيم «القاعدة»، وهو أمر أعلنه «أبو الليث» في شريط فيديو مع الدكتور أيمن الظواهري في صيف العام الماضي. He said that was Dernawi «official station fighter» in Iran, and moved to Afghanistan eight months ago only, now decided to merge «fighter» in the organization «Qaeda», which was announced «Abu Zuhri» in a video with Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri in the summer past.

It seems that Dernawi is the man referred to by the media as Pakistani «Vice Abu Zuhri» who was killed in Mir Ali, among a group of at least seven Arabs and six from Central Asia. ونقلت وكالة «أسوشيتد برس»، أمس، عن مصدرين في الاستخبارات الباكستانية قولهما إن «أبو الليث» قُتل عندما كان يحاول استخدام هاتف يعمل بالأقمار الاصطناعية ويدخل إلى الشبكة العنكبوتية العالمية (الانترنت) في منزل قيادي قبلي متشدد يدعى «عبدالستار». The news agency «Associated Press» yesterday, the sources in the Pakistani intelligence as saying that «Abu Zuhri» killed when he tried to use satellite phone works and enters the World Wide Web (Internet) at the home of a leading tribal hard-liner named «Abdul Sattar».

Gerald

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From Al-Ekhlaas:
About the martyrdom of the leader struggling

Sheikh / Abu Zuhri Libyan - accepted by God in the martyrs --

( He was not a Martyrs, to call him a martyrs insults all real martyrs, he was a criminal, ordering the deaths of Muslims, women, children, bombing Mosques and market places.. Taliban claims responsibility for mosque suicide bombing G )

(Do not think those killed in the name of Allah dead, but alive with their Lord, well) Al Omran 169
( He is burning in HELL, BIH..G )

Praise be to God and then thank God, thank God for what had estimated, and thank God chosen by the Nation of Islam superior honour Jihad in the process and then raising and collecting people's hearts and make them hands on the good and supported his support.

Among those Sheikh Mufdhal gallant and heroic and brave Americans Sheikh / Abu Zuhri Qasimi Libyan which bled the nation of Islam to the news of his martyrdom with a group of brothers on the wealthy Pakistan Muslim - her God out of apostate and his clique -.

We hemorrhage of the nation as news of the martyrdom of Sheikh am happy eternity including Sheikh and earned the certificate in the name of Allah, and I am saddened by the loss and that the only legacy left over Sheikh would not only Ahja Bali and burn the enemies of religion and creed, in detail, the path of brothers who joined the march of jihad, and how supervised the preparation camps, and how the rational and plans almost to the enemy and the most sophisticated manipulations, and led the battles of glory and your parents strongholds of the infidels and weakens the resolve of its soldiers, even elevated as a martyr, God seems AD.

We say to the nation and the army of the infidels Red nation does not die, I only killed, and killing our guide on the health of our approach, and Vkdotna Mchaikhna killed in the first grade fixed Sabrin impetus saying of the poet:


We are not Stubs bleeding Klomna *** but our feet towing blood

The Mchaikhna and our leaders are always in the first row of such great benefit of the Muslim nation, and they like to follow the best science work, or fail on the need of God, and are not supporting their nation, I heard horror Lahee'ah or PC to fight with their soldiers and their men, and live with the pain and walk on their bodies and their blood achieved victory, God willing.

Also call upon all brothers to jihad and urged his family not to publish any news reaches them not confirm or dissemination formally by the competent authorities of this, especially regarding the leaders and elders, and their responsibilities in order to march Jihad, and any news not sponsored hand official saying from the information known is contested credibility even prove the contrary, up from Concerned stress this, do not be with the enemy against us.

God said: ( BURN N HELL )

(If came to them is the fear of security or if Rdoh broadcasting by the Prophet and the first of them is to learn who Istnbtonh whom it not Fadlallah mercy to you and ye little devil women) 83


I am God and to Him we return I


The womb COLLEGE father, Sheikh Al Qassimi and accepted by the brothers in the group of martyrs


Dawn Information Center

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Ayman al Zawahri's best bud.
Are ya celebrating ?

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Thats one REWARD DOWN, $200,000.00 usd....GONE
REWARD: report terrorist in Secret


BIH

GERALD

Thanks for the tip.


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