American officials say they are nearly certain a top al-Qaeda terrorist was killed in a Pakistan drone strike, but his death has been reported in error before.An unnamed senior official said he is "99 percent sure" a June attack got Ilyas Kashmiri, but "the folks that make that determination aren't ready to say so definitively."
Where's the severed head?
Kashmiri is, or was, a top al-Qaeda figure and ran the Harakat-ul-Jihad-Islami. In early June, Kashmiri's group said he had been killed in a nighttime drone strike on a convoy in South Wazoo. Pakistani officials said nine had died but did not identify Kashmiri among them.
Kashmiri was a veteran jihadi who fought in Kashmir and against the Soviets in Afghanistan, but later fell out with his Pakistani military patrons and was nabbed in a bid to assassinate Pervez Musharraf in 2003. He has been called the mastermind of the Mumbai terror attacks, and is suspected of sending operatives into Europe to plot similar crimes there.