An al-Qaida member wanted for his suspected role in the bombings of US embassies in East Africa was killed by Pakistani forces in a raid near the Afghan border, a Pakistani Cabinet minister said yesterday. 

 

Egyptian Mohsin Musa Matawalli Atwah, 45, who was on the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists, was killed along with at least six other militants in a raid led by helicopter gunships late Wednesday in the remote North Waziristan village of Naghar Kalai, near the Afghan border, the minister said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

 

Another senior Pakistani intelligence official said military reports from the field indicated that Atwah had been killed in the attack, along with the militants and two children. The intelligence official also declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the case.

 

Neither official specified how they knew Atwah had been killed. Officials and village residents said that armed men took bodies away after the attack.

 

US authorities had posted a US$5 million bounty for Atwah, who was accused of involvement in the August 7, 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans.

 

FBI officials in Washington and US and Egyptian diplomats in Islamabad were unable to confirm that Atwah had been killed.

 

Pakistan, a close US ally in the war on terror, has been battling Islamic militants operating along the volatile, porous Pakistan-Afghan border region, where attacks by al-Qaida and Taliban-linked militants against Pakistani forces have intensified in recent months.

 

Pakistani authorities have also arrested more than 750 al-Qaida suspects, including top lieutenants of Osama bin Laden such as Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Farraj al-Libbi.

 

According to a senior army official, Atwah was tracked down to the suspected al-Qaida hideout with information gleaned from militants detained during a recent military operation in the region.

 

Atwah was a key supplier of "weapons, explosive material and other ammunition to terrorists who often target our forces in North and South Waziristan," the official said on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorized to speak to the media.

 

An intelligence official in Miran Shah, the main town in the volatile North Waziristan region, said Wednesday's raid killed nine people, including five non-Pakistanis, and two-year-old and two-month-old brothers who lived in the house.

 

Residents in Naghar Kalai said they heard at least one loud explosion followed by intense machine-gun fire focused on a house in which a group of men from "outside the village" had been staying.

 

The building near an Islamic school was destroyed and three cars exploded.

 

"There was a huge explosion, which we think was a missile attack, before the helicopters came and bombed the house," said village tribal elder Khan Wazir. "When we came to the house there was dust and other people who were already trying to pull out bodies and sift through the rubble."

 

After the attack, a group of armed men surrounded the crumpled house to keep onlookers back before taking at least seven bodies away, Wazir said.

 

"We had information about the presence of foreign militants," said Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the top Pakistan army spokesman. "It was a sting operation and the target was knocked out."

 

Sultan said al-Qaida members are moving in small groups and mixing with locals in North Waziristan, which has witnessed a spike in militant activity in recent months, with almost daily attacks on Pakistani security forces in the area.

 

"The people (behind the attacks) are certainly the al-Qaida people," Sultan said. "They are the ones who are financing and they do have some local facilitators."

 

Pakistani security officials have previously said bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri and other top al-Qaida figures could be hiding in the Pakistan-Afghan border region. Some 80,000 Pakistani troops have been deployed along the Pakistani side of the border to catch al-Qaida and Taliban militants.

 

(Chinadaily.com.cn via agencies, April 14, 2006)