Two Kenyans said to be among al-Qaeda’s top operatives on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list were killed in a US strike in Pakistan on New Year’s Eve, an American official said today.
Al-Qaeda's operations chief in Pakistan, Usama al-Kini, and an aide Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan were believed to be dead.
Usama al-Kini is believed by US intelligence to be behind the September 2008 Marriott Hotel bombing in Islamabad and the October 2007 attack on a convoy carrying Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto. Ms Bhutto was killed in a separate attack in late 2007.
Both men are believed to have been involved in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa, according to the official.
Both died in South Waziristan, on Pakistan's Afghan border. There were conflicting reports in Pakistan where two low-level intelligence officials said the men were among three people killed when a US drone fired a missile on January 1st.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said this afternoon Pakistan had sent India a response to evidence from the Mumbai attacks. Ties between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India deteriorated sharply after co-ordinated attacks by 10 gunmen on the Indian city of Mumbai in late November that killed 179 people.
India blamed Pakistani militants from the outset. But Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said this week for the first time that the assault must have had the support of "some official agencies" in Pakistan. Pakistan has denied involvement by state agencies and said Singh was ratcheting up tension.
Pakistan confirmed on Wednesday the lone surviving gunman from the attack was Pakistani, and Mr Gilani said today Pakistan's main security agency had sent India a response to a dossier of evidence from the attacks India presented this week.
"Our ISI has given their feedback," Mr Gilani told reporters, referring to the military's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. He did not elaborate but said Pakistan would co-operate if more information was required.
India said the evidence linked Pakistani militants to the attacks, and included data from satellite phones and the surviving attacker's confession.
Mr Gilani said it was regrettable India had frozen a four-year-old peace process that had brought better ties between the rivals who have fought three wars since 1947. "The situation on our eastern border has once again become very fragile," Mr Gilani told a seminar in Islamabad. "The world must not let tension between India and Pakistan escalate."
Agencies