Al-Qaida announces deaths of 4 commanders

Monday 04th August, 05:54 AM JST

CAIRO, Egypt —

Al-Qaida on Sunday confirmed the death of a top commander accused of training the suicide bombers who killed American sailors on the USS Cole eight years ago. Abu Khabab al-Masri had a $5 million bounty on his head from the United States and was believed to have been killed in a suspected U.S. airstrike in Pakistan last week.

In an Internet statement, al-Qaida said al-Masri and three other top figures were killed and warned of vengeance for their deaths. It did not provide details or say when and where they died.

But Pakistani authorities have said they believe al-Masri is one of six people who were killed in an American airstrike on July 28 on a compound in South Waziristan, a lawless tribal region near the Afghan border.

The U.S. had placed a $5 million bounty on al-Masri, an Egyptian militant whose real name is Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar. The U.S. Justice Department has accused him of training terrorists to use poisons and explosives, and he is believed to have trained the bombers who killed 17 U.S. sailors on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

He is also believed to have helped run al-Qaida’s Darunta training camp in eastern Afghanistan, until the camp was abandoned amid the 2001 U.S. invasion of the country. There he is thought to have conducted experiments in chemical and biological weapons, testing materials on dogs.

The al-Qaida statement called al-Masri and the other three slain commanders “a group of heroes” and warned of vengeance for their deaths.

“We tell the enemies of God that God has saved those who will be even more painful for you,” it said. “As Abu Khabab has gone, he left behind, with God’s grace, a generation of faithful students who will make you suffer the worst torture and avenge him and his brothers.”

The statement, whose authenticity could not be independently confirmed, was dated July 30 and signed by al-Qaida’s top Afghan leader, Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed. It was posted on an Islamic militant website where al-Qaida usually issues official statements and videos of its leaders. The statement made no mention of an airstrike and did not say how or when they died.

Kamal Shah, a senior official in Pakistan’s Interior Ministry, said the government had “no official confirmation as yet” that al-Masri was dead. The White House declined comment Sunday.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials and at least one pro-Taliban militant have said they believed al-Masri had died in the July 28 attack. An American official in Washington had expressed cautious optimism al-Masri, whose pseudonym means “father of the trotting horse, the Egyptian,” was among the dead.

But terrorism experts downplayed the significance of al-Masri’s death.

“A big name does not mean a big impact on the ground,” said Mustafa Alani, director of national security and terrorism studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. “The bottom line is that those people are replaceable. The organization has developed in such a way that it can survive and fill in any gap even if Osama bin Laden was to die.”

Dia’a Rashwan, a Cairo-based expert on terrorism and Islamic movements, said al-Masri’s death could decrease morale among al-Qaida’s followers, but it wasn’t a huge loss for the terror group, especially in Afghanistan.

“Al-Qaida might be facing setbacks in Iraq, but not in Afghanistan ... and any loss will appear to its fighters as a triumph against the enemy, not a defeat,” Rashwan said.

Little is known about the other three slain commanders other than may also be Egyptian because their pseudonyms included the name “al-Masri,” which means Egyptian in Arabic. The Web statement identified the three as Abu Mohammed Ibrahim bin Abi Farag al-Masri, Abdul-Wahab al-Masri and Abu Islam al-Masri.

It gave no details about them, beyond calling Abu Mohammed “the holy warrior sheik and tutor.” The statement said some of their children were killed with them but did not provide more information.

CBS News reported Friday that al-Qaida’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, was killed or critically injured in the strike. CBS said it had obtained a copy of an intercepted letter dated July 29 from unnamed sources in Pakistan in which a Taliban leader urgently requested a doctor to treat Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant.

A Taliban spokesman, Maulvi Umar, denied the report. Pakistan army and intelligence officials said they had no information that al-Zawahri was hit.

The U.S. military has not confirmed it was behind the July 28 missile strike. But similar strikes are periodically launched on militant targets in the tribal border region and previous such attacks inside Pakistan are believed to have been conducted by the CIA using Predator drones.

Both bin Laden and al-Zawahri are believed to be hiding in the rugged and lawless tribal regions along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Al-Masri was previously reported killed in a January 2006 missile strike by a CIA Predator drone in the Pakistani tribal region of Bajaur that also targeted and missed al-Zawahri. But Pakistani officials quickly backed off claims al-Masri was killed.

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Associated Press writers Maamoun Youssef and Omar Sinan in Cairo and Stephen Graham in Islamabad, Pakistan contributed to this report.

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8 Comments

rjd_jr at 08:11 AM JST - 4th August

Finally some good news from there.
USAPatriot at 08:22 AM JST - 4th August

Hey!! The evil doers are losing. We are wiping terrorism off the map.

Way to go USA!!!
skipthesong at 09:08 AM JST - 4th August

Finally some good news from there." no offense rjd, but I am surprised you would post words like that.
nandakandamanda at 02:58 PM JST - 4th August

“We tell the enemies of God that God has saved those who will be even more painful for you,” it said. “As Abu Khabab has gone, he left behind, with God’s grace, a generation of faithful students who will make you suffer the worst torture and avenge him and his brothers.”

Look at this statement. It is 'good' in the sense that they really know how to use propaganda to capture fresh recruits. Into the net they swim, and then a violent twisting takes place until the recruit is too terrified not to obey.

How is it, that the normal human world rarely has anything effective to say in response?

It is a complete lie, of course, because it starts from the supposition that they are the friends of God, which they are obviously and blatantly not. They act as if they have a right to talk about God's grace, which they cannot ever have experienced. The word God is cynically used for political ends, and it assumes that God doesn't actually exist. (Otherwise they would be in deep trouble for what they are doing in the name of God.) Since when does God enjoy torturing people? God is merely a useful concept to an end. An easily-gabbled word. A very dangerous game in which black is openly and loudly declared white, and no one has the courage to squeak back. The Emperor's New Clothes indeed. And thousands of people continue suffer and die daily as a result of the policies of these manipulators.
Sarge at 04:26 PM JST - 4th August

"The U.S. had placed a $5 million bounty on al-Masri"

What's the bounty on Binny? $50 million?
nandakandamanda at 04:29 PM JST - 4th August

Does anyone ever collect on these bounties?
frontandcentre at 05:14 PM JST - 4th August

nanda, unless they pay the drone pilot who fired the missile, I guess it's not likely to change hands.

While I welcome success in fighting armed ciminals, the best way to fight fundamentalism is actually not with missile and bullets, but to make the alternatives look much more attractive to those AQ would otherwise recruit. AQ is shooting itself in both feet by killing so many other muslims in Iraq, and its power is dwindling there, thanks mainly to the unity of the opposition to these killers.

I hope young people in Pakistan and Afghanistan come to realise what a pointless struggle it is to fight for a fundamentalism when the path to happiness is education, work and self-enrichment. It'll take time and a much more enlightened foreign policy from the US and the west, but maybe it can be achieved.
skipthesong at 07:34 PM JST - 4th August

but to make the alternatives look much more attractive" Give an example because that seems very hard if salvation for eternity is offered with 77 virgins!

OBL is more than just a terrorist, he is an eloquent speaker, poetic and trusting to so many people. That is why to date, you have never ever seen even the most moderate Muslims, even living far away, denounce him. They, well most, believe in the man. Seems his agenda is better than any westerner can put out.