Top al-Qaida operatives believed killed in U.S. strike

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – An al-Qaida explosives and chemical weapons expert and a relative of the terror network's No. 2 leader were among four top operatives believed killed in a U.S. missile strike in Pakistan last week, Pakistani security officials said today, as authorities arrested five more militant suspects.

Pakistani authorities have said four or five foreign militants were killed in the Jan. 13 attack in Damadola, a village near the Afghan border. Officials say the airstrike targeted — but missed — al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri. It also killed at least 13 residents, outraging many in the Islamic country.

The security officials, all speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media, named four al-Qaida figures thought to have been in the village at the time of the attack, saying that their bodies were believed to have been taken away by sympathizers.

They included Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, 52, an Egyptian cited by the Justice Department as an explosives expert and poisons instructor who trained hundreds of mujahedeen at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan near the eastern city of Jalalabad before the ouster of hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001.

The department's Web site says that the exact whereabouts of Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, are unknown but that he may be residing in Pakistan, and offers $5 million for information leading to his arrest. It says that since 1999, Umar has distributed training manuals with recipes for crude chemical and biological weapons.

According to experts on Islamic extremists, Umar is believed to have trained the suicide bombers who killed 17 U.S. sailors on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

Among the other foreigners possibly killed were Abu Obaidah al-Masri, the al-Qaida chief responsible for attacks on U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan who was based in Kunar province, across the border from the strike site; and Abdul Rehman al-Maghribi, a Moroccan and relative of al-Zawahri, possibly his son-in-law.

A Pakistani official said al-Maghribi helped distribute statements, CDs and videos publicizing al-Qaida. In particular, al-Maghribi had contacts with Arab journalists and kept them abreast of al-Qaida news, he said.

Some of the officials also named a fourth man, Khalid Habib, the al-Qaida operations chief along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The officials referred to him as the most senior figure believed killed, saying he'd planned assassination attacks on Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and was associated with Abu Farraj al-Libbi, a top al-Qaida figure arrested in northwestern Pakistan in May.

All the officials stressed that none of the militants' bodies has been found.

"We do not have any evidence to prove that they have been killed, but we have indications that they were there and were among those bodies that were taken away," an official said, refusing to give further details.

Pentagon officials said they had no information on the reported identities of the dead, and CIA spokesman Tom Crispell said the agency could not comment.

Meanwhile, intelligence agents raided a house and a mosque in the northwestern town of Swat late Wednesday and arrested five foreigners on suspicion of links with al-Qaida, security officials said. The suspects appeared to be Afghans and none was thought to be a senior figure in the terror network or present during the Damadola attack, but they were still being questioned, said the officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

Shah Zaman Khan, director general for media relations for Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, said two pro-Taliban clerics, Faqir Mohammed and Liaqat Ali, who survived the Damadola assault could provide more clues about a dinner attended by the senior al-Qaida operatives before the air strike — that al-Zawahri was invited to but skipped.

"The government is actively hunting for them. Once we have them in custody, more will definitely be revealed about the dinner," he said.

Khan revised the government toll of the civilians killed from 18 to 13, saying two women and a child who had been presumed dead were located, while two filled graves in Damadola were found to contain no bodies. Villagers had apparently dug more graves than were needed. The government, however, has yet to provide a list of the 13 dead.

After the attack, Damadola residents said all the dead were local people and that no one had removed bodies. Provincial authorities said sympathizers took the bodies of four or five foreign militants to bury in the mountains, thereby preventing identification.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the government believed some foreigners had been killed, but authorities had not found the bodies and so had not conducted DNA tests that would confirm the identities.

Pakistan maintains it wasn't given advance word of the airstrike, reportedly carried out by unmanned Predator drones flying from Afghanistan.

It condemned it as killing innocent civilians.

On today, about 1,000 Islamic hard-liners chanting "Death to America!" and "Jihad! Jihad!" marched in the northwestern city of Peshawar — the latest in a series of protests that have also denounced Musharraf, who ended Pakistan's support of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

Associated Press writers Riaz Khan in Peshawar and Matthew Pennington in Islamabad contributed to this report.