The U.S. believes Central Intelligence Agency drone attacks have killed two prominent Islamic militant figures in Pakistan affiliated with al Qaeda, one of whom was on the U.S.'s list of top 20 targets, according to officials briefed on the matter.Drone attacks targeting Baitullah Mehsud and his supporters destroyed houses in a Pakistani village in August. One drone attack Monday is believed to have killed the leader of the Islamic Jihad Union, Najmiddin Kamolitdinovich Jalolov, an Uzbek native implicated in terrorist plots and attacks in Germany and Uzbekistan. Officials said they are almost certain he was killed, though a DNA test hasn't yet been performed.
A drone attack on Sept. 7 appeared to have killed another prominent Islamic militant, Ilyas Kashmiri, who had been briefly detained in Pakistan for alleged involvement in a 2003 assassination attempt against then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. There is less certainty about his death, however.
The two men are "solid midlevel commanders," said Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University professor who specializes in terrorism. Targeting middle-level officers is important, he said, because "when you do kill the senior commanders, there's no one to fill their shoes."
CIA drone attacks intensified in the early months of the Obama administration. A drone last month claimed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who was believed to have been responsible for the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
This most recent campaign targeted militants in three attacks over the course of a week. The U.S. has launched 74 drone-missile attacks since August 2008, and 38 of those strikes were launched this year, according to the Long War Journal, which tracks CIA drone strikes.
U.S. officials don't openly acknowledge the CIA drone attacks, but as recently as Tuesday, the top U.S. intelligence director touted the success of intelligence operations against al Qaeda. "What has really made all the nations safer has been the accumulation of knowledge about al Qaeda and its affiliate groups, which enables us to be more aggressive in expanding that knowledge and stopping things before they happen," said Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair.
The Treasury Department last year designated Mr. Jalolov's group as an al Qaeda-affiliated organization with the goal of overthrowing the Uzbek government. Treasury officials froze his assets and prohibited Americans from conducting financial transactions with him. The U.N. also placed sanctions on him that included freezing assets and an arms embargo.
Mr. Jalolov, 37 years old, the man on the CIA's top target list, was considered a potential ringleader in a September 2007 plot to attack several venues in Germany, according to the Treasury Department. In 2006, he directed the casing of terrorist targets, particularly hotels catering to Western visitors, in Central Asia. U.S. officials alleged he was an organizer of the 2004 terrorist attacks in Uzbekistan that killed at least 47 people.
Mr. Kashmiri, an al Qaeda operational commander, is reported to be among Pakistan's top 10 most-wanted terrorists. He was arrested in December 2003 in connection with an attempted suicide bombing targeting Mr. Musharraf, and was released a month later. Mr. Kashmiri then moved his operations to Pakistan's tribal Waziristan region and linked up with Mr. Mehsud.