A CIA airstrike on a building in Pakistan may have killed Osama bin Laden’s most-trusted aide, sources said.
The building where Ayman al-Zawahiri was thought to be is in Damadola, a small village near the Afghan border.
There has been no confirmation that al-Zawahiri, 54, was killed in the attack Friday. However, sources say there was intelligence suggesting he was in the building at the time of the strike.
Pakistani officials were at the scene of the strike, trying to determine if al-Zawahiri was killed.
Pakistan’s information minister could not confirm al-Zawahiri was the target of a CIA strike, and both the Pentagon and White House declined to comment Friday night.
A doctor in the area told The Associated Press that at least 17 people were killed in the attack, but other witnesses at the scene said the death toll was higher.
Just last week, the Arabic-language news network Al-Jazeera aired a videotape in which the al Qaeda operative called on President Bush to concede defeat in Iraq.
It was al-Zawahiri’s fifth message released over the past year, including ones claiming responsibility for the July attacks on the transit system in London, England.
The U.S. government is offering up to $25 million for information leading to the capture of al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor who is considered to be the intellectual and ideological driving force behind al Qaeda.
He has been associated with bin Laden since at least 1987, when they met in Pakistan. He also is believed to be bin Laden’s personal physician.
In 1998, al-Zawahiri merged his own Islamic militant group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, into bin Laden’s organization.
Three months after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, U.S. forces attacked al-Zawahiri’s residence in Afghanistan, killing his wife and children.
In March 2004, Pakistani troops launched an assault in Waziristan province, where intelligence indicated al-Zawahiri was hiding, but he was not captured.
Butr, who really knows? These areas are so remote, how could anyone possibly determine this already?
Here’s the report:
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.
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 sympathisers.
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)….