Pakistani Military Sources Say Zawahiri May Be Dead

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EXCLUSIVE: Pakistani Military Sources Say Zawahiri May Be Dead

The attack took place early this morning Pakistan time in a small village a few miles from the border with Afghanistan.

Jan. 13, 2006 — Today, according to Pakistani military sources, U.S. aircraft attacked a compound known to be frequented by high level al Qaeda operatives. Pakistani officials tell ABC News that al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, may have been among them.

U.S. intelligence for the last few days indicated that Zawahiri might be in the location or about to arrive, although there is still no confirmation from U.S. officials that he was among the victims.

Villagers described seeing an unmanned plane circling the area for the last few days and then bombs falling in the early morning darkness.

Eighteen people were killed, according to the villagers who said women and children were among the fatalities.

But Pakistani officials tell ABC News that five of those killed were high-level al Qaeda figures, and their bodies are now undergoing forensic tests for positive identification.

Officials say Zawahiri was known to have used safe houses in this area last winter and was believed to be in the area again this winter.

Zawahiri, who appeared just last week in a new videotaped message, had increasingly been taking the operational reins of al Qaeda, and is thought by U.S. officials to be the current true mastermind of the terrorist group.

Pakistani officials tell ABC News that the bodies of the five suspected al Qaeda figures will be recovered at first light in Pakistan, but it will still take a day or two for any kind of positive identification. U.S. officials in Washington did not comment.

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Qaeda No.2 away during attack: Pakistan official 1 hour, 48 minutes ago

ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. airstrike on Pakistan village targeted al Qaeda's second-in-command, U.S. intelligence sources say, but Pakistani officials said Ayman al-Zawahri was not there and condemned the attack.

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The strike near the Afghan border on Friday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and three houses were destroyed, according to residents of Damadola village in Bajaur tribal area.

CIA-operated unmanned drones were believed to have been used in the attack, U.S. sources said. A Pakistani intelligence official said four missiles had been fired.

Pakistan condemned the airstrike and summoned U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said he had no information about Zawahri, though another high-ranking Pakistani official said Osama bin Laden's deputy was not in the village.

"Al-Zawahri was not there at the time," the official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.

Al Arabiya satellite television said on Saturday Zawahri was alive, quoting a source which it said has contact with al Qaeda.

The United States has offered $25 million each for Egyptian Zawahri and bin Laden, who have been on the run since U.S.-led forces toppled Afghanistan's Taliban government in 2001 after the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities.

They are believed to have been hiding along the border under the protection of Pashtun tribes.

Pakistani intelligence sources said Zawahri was believed to have made visits to the Bajaur area, though on Friday he was not in Damadola, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Islamabad.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement foreigners had been in the vicinity, and were the probable target of the attack from forces based in Afghanistan.

"As a result of this act there has been loss of innocent civilian lives which we condemn," the ministry said.

Anger has been building in Pakistan over repeated U.S. attacks, and on Saturday hundreds of protesters chanted anti-American slogans at Inayat Killi village, near Damadola.

The incident came days after Pakistan, an important ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, lodged a strong protest with U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, saying cross-border firing in the Waziristan tribal area last weekend killed eight people.

President Pervez Musharraf, addressing officials in the town of Swabi to the north of Islamabad, made only a passing reference to the attack in Bajaur, saying it was being investigated.

CORPSES

People from Damadola said no foreigners, only local people, were present and killed in Friday's attack.

"I know all the 18 people killed. There was neither Zawahri nor any other Arab among them. Rather they were all poor people of the area," Haroon Rashid, the area's National Assembly representative, was quoted by the Afghan Islamic Press news agency as saying.

U.S. sources in Washington said the remains of the dead would have to be examined to determine whether Zawahri among them.

But Pakistani intelligence sources said they had no knowledge of any bodies other than those belonging to villagers, though some intelligence sources said they had heard a pro-militant Muslim cleric may have removed the corpses of some foreigners.

Residents of Damadola said some visitors had come from Afghanistan to celebrate this week's Eid al-Adha festival, and one said he saw two bodies he believed belonged to outsiders.

Analysts say bin Laden's and Zawahri's network has lost much of its capability to launch attacks globally following a string of high profile arrests in Pakistan and elsewhere.

While they have been put in the shade somewhat by the exploits of al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, they are still engender awe among Islamist militants and sympathizers.

Bin Laden and Zawahri teamed up in Pakistan in the late 1980s when both were involved in a jihad, or holy war, covertly backed by the United States, to end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Zawahri, a doctor, was involved in Egypt's radical Muslim Brotherhood during the 1960s. He spent three years in jail after the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981, but was freed after being cleared by a court.

(Additional reporting by Joanne Morrison in Washington and Zeeshan Haider and Raja Asghar in Islamabad)

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they missed...

Airstrike misses Al-Qaeda chief

Christina Lamb

'Wrong information' blamed for Pakistan deaths

AN AMERICAN airstrike targeting Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Al-Qaeda mastermind, was prompted by “wrong information” and killed Pakistani villagers including five women and five children, according to senior Pakistani officials. The attack took place in the early hours of Friday, when CIA-operated Predator drones circled the village of Damadola in the Bajaur area in northwest Pakistan before launching four Hellfire missiles at a mud-walled compound. Three houses were razed to the ground and 22 people died.

NI_MPU('middle');US officials said the raid was based on “good reporting” of Zawahiri’s presence in the village at a dinner celebrating the Muslim Eid holiday. Intelligence officials took away four bodies for identification.

The 54-year-old Egyptian doctor has been on the run for more than four years despite a $25m (£14m) price on his head and is said to have had narrow escapes in the areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Damadola lies in this rugged, mountainous area, just five miles from Afghanistan. When Pakistani intelligence received a tip-off that Zawahiri was there, it seemed to be a likely hideout. The village is controlled by a pro-Taliban party, the Tehrik Nifaz Shariat-i-Mohammadi, led by the charismatic Sufi Mohammad, whose supporters are believed to help Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders on the run.

The neighbouring Afghan province of Kunar is dominated by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the fundamentalist warlord with whom Zawahiri has close ties.

As the dead were buried yesterday amid angry scenes, villagers confirmed that their Eid guests had included four men who had come from Afghanistan. But they insisted that the four were not high-level Al-Qaeda officials as claimed. “We live on the border and all have friends and relatives on both sides,” said one villager.

Among the mourners was Shah Zaman, who lost two sons and a daughter in the attack. “I ran out and saw planes,” he said. “I ran towards a nearby mountain with my wife. When we were running we heard three more explosions and I saw my home being hit.”

Sahibzada Haroon Rashid, a member of parliament who lives nearby, said the planes had targeted three houses belonging to jewellery dealers. “The houses have been razed,” he said. “There is nothing left. Pieces of the missiles are scattered all around. Everything has been blackened in a 100-yard radius.”

Last night Pakistan’s foreign ministry protested to the US ambassador over what it described as the “loss of innocent civilian lives”. Shaikh Rashid Ahmed, Pakistan’s minister of information, said: “We don’t know whether Zawahiri was there or not. We are investigating.”

Another senior government official insisted that Zawahiri was not in the village. “They acted on wrong information,” he said. One Pakistani intelligence officer claimed that Zawahiri had been present but the Americans had taken too long to react and “missed him by six hours”.

Although Al-Qaeda has been overshadowed in the past two years by events in Iraq, the killing of Zawahiri would have been the biggest coup so far in the war on terrorism. Zawahiri acts as doctor and adviser to Osama Bin Laden, its leader, who suffers from low blood pressure. He is regarded as Bin Laden’s deputy, appearing alongside him in videos.

In his trademark white turban and large glasses, Zawahiri has issued the majority of statements in the name of the organisation. In one, after the July 7 attacks in London, he threatened the Queen, calling her “one of the severest enemies of Islam”.

To miss him again is an embarrassment for Washington. In March 2004 the Pakistani military — acting with CIA back-up — thought it had surrounded Zawahiri in South Waziristan, even sending DNA from one body to be tested. Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, excitedly told CNN that Al-Qaeda’s “number one or two” had been surrounded. This proved to be false.

Friday’s attack will compound local anger against Musharraf. According to intelligence sources, it was the second attempt to assassinate Zawahiri in eight days. A missile smashed into the home of a militant cleric in the Saidgi area, also close to the Afghan border, after a tip-off that Zawahiri was there. Eight members of Maulvi Noor Mohammad’s family were killed in the attack.

Additional reporting: Mohammed Shehzad, Islamabad, Dean Nelson, Delhi

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1986114,00.html