PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A U.S. missile strike on a Pakistani village in January killed a relative of al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader and a terror suspect wanted by America, Pakistan’s leader said Saturday, breaking weeks of silence about the identities of the men.
The nighttime attack – which also killed a dozen residents, including women and children – outraged Pakistanis, who said it violated the nation’s sovereignty.
Until now, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf had only said “foreigners” died in the Jan. 13 strike in the northwestern town of Bajur, near the Afghan border. But he provided more details Saturday while visiting northwestern Pakistan, though he did not name the dead terror suspects.
“Five foreigners were killed in the U.S. attack in Bajur,” Musharraf told tribal elders in the city of Charsada. “One of them was a close relative of Ayman al-Zawahri, and the other man was wanted by the U.S. and had a $5 million reward on his head.”
The Pakistani president added that al-Zawahri – al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader – was also thought to be in the town, where the suspects were meeting for a dinner. But Pakistani officials have said al-Zawahri skipped the event and instead sent his deputies.
Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian, is Osama bin Laden’s personal physician and top adviser. Both are believed to be hiding in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistani intelligence officials have said the two dead men were Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar and Abdul Rehman al-Maghribi.
Umar, 52, an Egyptian, has been cited by the U.S. Justice Department as an explosives expert and poisons instructor. He is suspected of training hundreds of mujahedeen, or holy warriors, at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan before the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001.
Al-Maghribi was a Moroccan and relative of al-Zawahri, possibly his son-in-law.
Pakistani officials said that sympathizers buried the five bodies at an undisclosed location that authorities have been unable to find.
The Americans and Pakistanis have provided little information about the attack. Unmanned Predator drones flying from Afghanistan reportedly fired the missiles.
Musharraf on Saturday defended his country’s role in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
“We are not doing it just to appease Americans,” he added. “We are pursuing a campaign against terrorism because it is against our own safety.”
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