Ayman al-Zawahri
Photo: Reuters
Pakistan: Qaeda no. 2 away during strike
Osama Bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahri was not in village near Afghan border that was hit by U.S. air strike early Friday, Pakistani government official says; at least 18 people killed in strike
A U.S. air strike in Pakistan targeted al-Qaeda's second-in-command, U.S. Sources said, but Ayman al-Zawahri was away at the time, according to a senior Pakistani official on Saturday.
The strike on Friday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and three houses were destroyed in a village near the Afghan border, residents said.
Pakistan condemned the air strike and would summon the U.S. ambassador to protest the attack, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said. He had no information about Zawahri.
CIA-operated unmanned drones were believed to have been used in the attack on Damadola village, across the border from Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. Sources said.
A high-ranking Pakistani official said Zawahri, deputy to al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, was not in the village. The United States has offered USD 25 million for either Zawahri or Bin Laden.
"Al-Zawahri was not there at the time," the Pakistani official told Reuters.
Pakistani intelligence sources said Zawahri was believed to have made visits to the Bajaur area, though on Friday he was not in Damadola, 200 kilometers (125 miles) northwest of Islamabad.
President Pervez Musharraf, addressing officials in the town of Swabi to the north of Islamabad, said only that "there was an incident in Bajaur. We are looking into it, who did it - people from outside have come."
A military spokesman at U.S. Central Command in Florida said there had been no official report of an attack in Pakistan.
Anger has been building in Pakistan over repeated U.S. intrusions, and on Saturday hundreds of protesters chanted anti-American slogans at Inayat Killi village, near Damadola.
Local people
People from Damadola said no foreigners, only local people, were present and were killed in Friday's attack.
"I know all the 18 people killed. There was neither al-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 as saying by the Afghan Islamic Press, a news agency based in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar.
Rashid, a member of the hard-line Islamic Jamaat-i-Islami party, said the bombing site was two km (a mile) from his home and he knew all people of the area.
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 nearby Waziristan area last weekend killed eight people.
On the run since U.S.-led forces toppled Afghanistan's Taliban government in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. cities, Bin Laden and Zawahri are believed to have been hiding in the border areas under the protection of Pashtun tribes.
U.S. Sources in Washington said the remains of the dead would be examined to determine whether Zawahri was killed.
Pakistani intelligence sources said they had no knowledge of any bodies other than those belonging to villagers.
But residents said some people had crossed from Afghanistan to celebrate this week's Eid al-Adha festival, and one said he had seen at least two bodies he believed belonged to outsiders.
Eight women and five children were among those killed.
At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, agents had been holding out hopes that Zawahri had been eliminated, according to a former official, in touch with old colleagues.
Analysts say several high profile arrests in Pakistan and elsewhere mean Bin Laden's and Zawahri's network has lost much of its capability to launch attacks.
But while they have been partly overshadowed by al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, they are still regarded with awe among Islamist militants and their sympathizers.
In a video aired last Friday, Zawahri hailed "Islam's victory in Iraq" and said the United States was being defeated there.
