ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. airstrike in Pakistan targeted al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, but it was unclear if he had been killed, U.S. sources knowledgeable about the strike said in Washington.
CNN quoted sources as saying the CIA had ordered the airstrike on buildings after receiving intelligence that Zawahri was in a village near the border with Afghanistan.
ABC News quoted Pakistani military sources as saying five of those killed were "high-level" al Qaeda figures.
Pakistan was investigating the reports, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said.
"Our investigation is still going on ... I cannot confirm anything," Ahmed told Reuters.
Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and the Egyptian-born Zawahri have eluded capture since U.S.-led forces toppled Afghanistan's Taliban government in 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
A spokesman at U.S. Central Command in Florida, the military command responsible for the region, said there had been no official report of such an attack.
"At this time, there is nothing in the operational reporting to suggest that this attack or incident occurred from a U.S. Central Command perspective," said Major Chris Karns.
A Pakistani security official and residents of the region said earlier that U.S. aircraft from Afghanistan had killed 18 people, including women and children, when they fired missiles at pro-Taliban Islamists in the Bajaur tribal region.
Residents of Bajaur, opposite Afghanistan's insurgent-troubled Kunar province, said aircraft had fired on the village of Damadola at about 3 a.m. on Friday (2200 GMT Thursday).
The missiles destroyed three houses. Five women and five children were among 18 dead, while five people were hurt, journalist Anwar Ullah said after visiting the scene.
Those killed included 13 members of the family of one tribesman, Bakhpoor Khan, he said.
"FOUR AIRCRAFT"
A Pakistani intelligence official said four U.S. aircraft had intruded into Pakistani airspace and fired four missiles.
Another intelligence official said Damadola has been a stronghold of Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad's Sharia Law), a pro-Taliban group banned by Pakistan in January 2002.
One resident said several foreigners had come to the village to celebrate this week's Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.
"There were three or four foreigners who came across from Afghanistan to celebrate Eid," the resident said. Another villager said the bodies of at least two people who seemed to have been outsiders had been taken away from the ruins of the homes destroyed in the attack.
"I saw two bodies which did not appear to belong to local people. Where these bodies have gone, I don't know?" said the second villager.
Pakistan's The News newspaper said the dead had been buried after a mass funeral led by Maulana Faqir Muhammad, a cleric wanted for giving shelter to suspected al Qaeda members.
Pakistani forces thought they might have surrounded Zawahri on another stretch of the Afghan border in March 2004 but it proved a false alarm, as the quarry turned out to be a lesser al Qaeda figure.
Pakistani security forces have captured or killed several senior al Qaeda members since 2001.
Last month, authorities said top al Qaeda member Abu Hamza Rabia was killed in a blast in the Waziristan region.
Residents said the blast came from a missile fired by an unidentified aircraft but Pakistani officials said explosives stored at a militant hideout detonated accidentally.
In a video aired last Friday, Zawahri congratulated Muslims "on Islam's victory in Iraq" and said the United States was being defeated there.
(Additional reporting by Joanne Morrison in Washington and Simon Cameron-Moore in Islamabad) <BR> |
|
