Air attack kills 17 but al-Qaida chief unhurt

ANGER mounted across Pakistan yesterday after an attempt to kill al-Qaida’s number two missed the target, but caused the death of at least 17 other people.

Yesterday intelligence officials said that Ayman al-Zawahri had been invited to a dinner marking an Islamic holiday at the Pakistani border village struck by a purported CIA airstrike, but he did not show up. The two Pakistani officials said this could explain why Friday’s predawn attack missed Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant.

Al-Zawahri sent some aides to the dinner instead and investigators were trying to determine whether they had been in any of the three houses destroyed in the missile strike that killed at least 17 people.

The new details emerged as Islamic groups held nationwide protests and anger mounted over the attack Pakistan says killed innocent civilians while al-Zawahri was not even there.

The intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said al-Zawahri, who has a wife from a local tribe, had been invited to a dinner in the village to mark the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha but changed his mind and sent some aides instead.

Pakistani officials have strongly condemned the strike on the ethnic Pashtun hamlet of Damadola, about four miles from the border with Afghanistan.

In Pakistan there is increasing frustration over a recent series of suspected US attacks along the frontier aimed at militants. Reflecting the anger, Islamic groups demonstrated across Pakistan yesterday to denounce the attack in Damadola. Some 10,000 people rallied in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city. Hundreds massed in the capital, Islamabad, and in Lahore, Multan and Peshawar burning US flags and demanding the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.Counter-terrorism officials in Washington have declined to comment on the airstrike, but a large number of al-Qaida and Taliban combatants, including al-Zawahri and bin Laden, are believed to have taken refuge in the rugged mountains along on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Pakistani officials insist they do not allow the 20,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan to cross the border in the hunt for Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

Survivors in Damadola denied militants were there, but some news reports quoted unidentified Pakistani officials as saying up to 11 extremists were believed among the dead.

Meanwhile, the governor of the Afghan province across from Bajur region, where Damadola is situated, said Afghanistan’s government had formed a 1,000-man tribal militia to watch the border.

“Al-Qaida, as well as the Taliban and other militants have camps over the border,” Kunar Governor Assadullah Wafa said.

He said the new force made up of young men from villages in the area would “hopefully make it harder for the militants” to slip across the frontier.