A senior member of Al Qaeda who was wanted for his part in the bombings of the United States embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 has been killed in an airstrike on a compound in Pakistan's restive tribal region of North Waziristan, two senior security officials said today.The Al Qaeda member, Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwa, who has several aliases, including Abdul Rahman and Abdul Rahman al-Muhajir, appears on an F.B.I. list of most wanted terrorists with an offer of a reward of up to $5 million for his capture and conviction.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Web site, Mr. Atwa is an Egyptian, aged 41, of medium build, "believed to currently be in Afghanistan." He is named with 13 of the top Al Qaeda figures, "believed to be responsible for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzanai and Kenya on August 7, 1998."
"These terrorist attacks indiscriminately killed 224 innocent civilians and wounded over 5,000 others," the Web site says.
Mr. Atwa was killed by Pakistani helicopter attack late Wednesday in the village of Anghar, nearly four miles north of the town of Miramshah, the capital of North Waziristan, the officials said, requesting anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press. "He has been confirmed dead," one of the officials said. "The confirmation is based on multiple intelligence sources."
Villagers reached by a local reporter in Anghar for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn confirmed the death of foreign militants, including "one big man" whom they identified by an alias, Abu Turab.
The attack was carried out by a pair of Pakistani-piloted Cobra helicopters that attacked a compound in Anghar close to a religious seminary shortly before midnight Wednesday. "This was his abode for quite some time," one security official said.
Besides Mr. Atwa, four to six other foreign militants whose nationalities were not immediately known were also killed in the attack, along with four local tribesmen, the security officials said.
Militants removed the bodies immediately after the attack and buried them at a secret location, making the job of finding the remains for DNA tests very difficult, the officials said. The four tribesmen were buried in the local graveyard.
Pakistan has claimed to have killed senior Al Qaeda operatives and foreign fighters in the past in the tribal areas along Afghanistan's border, but it has often been unable to produce the bodies or evidence of the deaths.
In January, an American missile strike aimed at Al Qaeda's top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, reportedly killed four or five important Al Qaeda figures, including his son-in-law, but not Mr. Zawahiri. The bodies of the foreign militants were never found, but officials said they had intelligence that the bodies were carried away for a secret burial.
The officials said that information extracted from 19 militants captured in a successful ambush by Pakistani security forces on April 5 in the Shawal region of North Waziristan led them to Mr. Atwa. The militants had attacked a Pakistani security post killing four soldiers after returning from an operation inside Afghanistan.
The captured men told their interrogators that weapons for the attack in Afghanistan had come from Mr. Atwa.
Maj. Gen Shaukat Sultan, a spokesman for the Inter Services Public Relations, the public affairs arm of the Pakistan Army, confirmed the attack on Anghar, but declined to speculate on the reported death of a senior Al Qaeda operative.
"We had information about the presence of Al Qaeda people in a compound in Anghar village," he said. "Troops launched sting operation and hit the compounds from Cobra helicopters."
General Sultan added, "I can't say about the presence or killing of any senior Al Qaeda man in the operation," noting that that security forces could not retrieve the bodies.
Residents of Anghar village told the local reporter for Dawn that the man known as Abu Turab was an Arab, who was commanding militants in North Waziristan near the Afghan border. Two vehicles laden with weapons, which were parked inside the compound, were also destroyed in the operation, they said.
"Cobra helicopters, roaring overhead fired missiles," one witness said. "Later one helicopter dropped a big bomb, which completely destroyed the compounds."
The foreigners were in one compound that was bombed. The four tribesmen, including a minor, were killed in another house. One woman was also wounded in the attack, the reporter said, quoting the local hospital.