Missile strike in Pakistan may have killed Al Qaeda official

Pakistan military is tight-lipped about the incident. Local officials say at least 12 people died in the attack, believed to have been carried out by a U.S. aerial drone.

By Zulfiqar Ali and Laura King
Special to the Times

12:56 PM PDT, July 28, 2008

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN — A Pakistani security official said an apparent U.S. missile strike early today may have killed a senior Al Qaeda trainer believed to be a chemical weapons expert.

Local officials in the tribal region of South Waziristan said at least 12 people died in the attack, believed to have been carried out by an unmanned aerial drone. Foreign militants were among the dead, and one of them was thought to be Abu Khabab Masri, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Pakistani military, as is its custom, denied knowledge of the missile strike and whether it had been carried out by the United States. American attacks inside Pakistan are highly sensitive politically.

The attack came on the day that Pakistani Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gillani was meeting President Bush in Washington. In the past, Pakistani authorities have sometimes aided in or carried out the reported capture or killing of a senior Islamic militant at around the time of such meetings.

The Pakistani security official cautioned that the death of Masri had not been corroborated by DNA tests or any other means of positive identification. Masri's death was reported once previously, in a January 2006 strike in the village of Damadola, in the Bajur tribal agency. That report turned out to be untrue.

A local resident in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, said today's missile strike occurred before dawn, hitting an Islamic seminary, or madrassa, and also striking an adjoining compound in the hamlet of Zyara Leetha. The dead included civilians, among them a woman and her two children, he said.

Residents also reported that militants immediately closed off the scene of the bombing, suggesting that some senior figure might have been among those killed.

Pakistani militants often cite such strikes as U.S. violations of Pakistan's sovereignty, and use them to stir up anti-American sentiment. A local militant commander, Maulana Nazir, said Pakistan's government should prevent such raids. Pakistan is under tremendous pressure to provide more cooperation in tracking Taliban and Al Qaeda figures sheltered in the tribal areas. But the coalition government showed new signs of disarray as Gillani headed into his meeting with Bush.

Over the weekend, the government announced a major change in the chain of command for Pakistan's most powerful spy agency -- but then reversed the directive 24 hours later.

The government issued a statement late Saturday, as Gillani was en route to Washington, saying that Inter Services Intelligence, which is commanded by a senior military officer, would begin reporting directly to the civilian Interior Ministry.

But after what Pakistani press reports described as furious protests the following day from senior military and intelligence officials, the order was canceled.

The ISI, sometimes described as a state within a state, helped arm and organize the Taliban in the 1990s. Critics, including the governments of neighboring India and Afghanistan, accuse the ISI of retaining links with Islamic militants and fomenting attacks by them.