US missile likely killed top Pakistani Al-Qaeda militant

A US drone strike likely killed Pakistan’s Al-Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri, in what would deal a major blow to the terror network a month after Osama bin Laden’s death, officials said yesterday.

The 47-year-old is one of the most feared operational commanders of the network that Osama bin Laden founded and has been blamed for a string of high-profile attacks on Western targets, as well as in India and Pakistan.

He has a maximum US bounty of $5 million on his head and Pakistani officials said he was the target of a US drone strike in South Waziristan on the Afghan border last Friday, in which nine members of his banned group died.

His killing would likely be seen as a huge achievement in the US after Navy SEALs killed Bin Laden in Pakistan, itself feted as the greatest psychological victory over Al-Qaeda since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

A senior Pakistani security official said there were “strong indications” that Kashmiri had been killed, but that it was impossible to provide 100 per cent confirmation so soon after the attack without access to the bodies.

The corpses were burnt beyond recognition and swiftly buried. Militants also barred access to the site of the attack in Ghwakhwa in South Waziristan, a militant stronghold despite a sweeping Pakistani offensive in 2009.

“There are strong indications that he has been killed in the strike, but we are still trying to confirm it,” the senior Pakistani official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Pakistani officials said Kashmiri had been in the area for several days and all those killed were from his Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islam (HuJI) group.

Senior security officials explained confirmation would be difficult unless Kashmiri’s family or group officially announced his death.

“According to our reports, he was present in this area. We have information he has been killed but no one has seen his dead body,” local administration official Naimat Ullah told AFP.

Another security official said two close associates who usually travel with Kashmiri, Amir Hamza and Mohammad Usman, were killed.

Kashmiri is understood to have been in the area to discuss strategy should the Pakistani military launch an offensive in North Waziristan, as was predicted as part of the fallout surrounding bin Laden’s killing.

Anti-terrorism experts have long described Kashmiri as one of Al-Qaeda’s main operational commanders. He reportedly escaped a US drone strike in North Waziristan in late 2009.

He has been blamed for multiple attacks in Pakistan, including the two most humiliating assaults on the military – a May 22 siege on a naval air base in Karachi and in October 2009 on the national army headquarters in Rawalpindi.

Counter-terrorism officials believe he was the main coordinator of a terror plot targeting Britain, France, Germany and the US, which was apparently in the early stages when detected by intelligence agencies in 2010.

Kashmiri’s family in the village of Thathi in Bhimber district, more than nine hours’ drive from Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, said yesterday they had not been in contact with him for six years.