Musharraf hails death of al-Qaida chief

PAKISTANI President Pervez Musharraf yesterday hailed the killing of top al-Qaida operative Amjad Hussain Farooqi as a breakthrough and predicted it would lead to more high-profile arrests.

Farooqi, who was wanted for his alleged role in the 2002 kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and in two assassination attempts on Gen Musharraf in December 2003, was shot dead during a four-hour gunbattle on Sunday after vowing never to surrender.

Three other Pakistanis, one of them an Islamic cleric, were arrested.