CIA kills al-Qaida operative in missile strike
The strike, believed to have been conducted by a CIA aircraft, killed Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
US counter-terrorism officials say al-Harethi was al-Qaida’s chief operative in Yemen and a suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole.
Al-Harethi’s car was struck by a Hellfire air-to-ground missile on Monday. The CIA launches Hellfires from pilotless Predator aircraft. Five other people, believed low-level al-Qaida operatives, also were killed.
The attack occurred in the northern province of Marib, about 100 miles east of Yemen’s capital San’a, where al-Qaida is considered active.
The official Yemeni news agency, local tribesmen and the US official confirmed the strike killed al-Harethi. Witnesses said they saw an aircraft, possibly a helicopter, in the area. Hellfires can also be launched by attack helicopters and are used by both the US Army and Marine Corps.
US counter-terrorism officials have said al-Harethi, also known as Abu Ali, was a top target of their efforts. He was a close associate of Osama bin Laden in Sudan in the early 1990s. Saudi fugitive bin Laden, blamed for the September 11 attacks, relocated to Afghanistan in 1996.
Speaking on Monday about al-Harethi, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters: “It would be a very good thing if he were out of business.”
The CIA declined comment on reports of his death, and President George W Bush ignored a question about the attack after he voted yesterday in Crawford, Texas.
Al-Harethi was among hundreds of former fighters who returned to Yemen in the 1990s from Afghanistan, where some fought alongside bin Laden against the Soviet army.
Yemeni officials say al-Harethi went into hiding in 2001 after learning he was wanted for questioning by US investigators in the Cole bombing.
Between August and November of last year, al-Harethi spent months in Hosun al-Jalal, a poor village in Yemen’s Marib province, a region populated by gun-toting tribesmen where government forces venture only with the permission of local chiefs.
Al-Harethi lived in the village along with Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, another al-Qaida suspect wanted in the Cole attack.
A Yemeni security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said intelligence agents had al-Harethi’s farm under surveillance for months and relayed information to US forces.
Yemen, bin Laden’s ancestral home, has become a haven for some al-Qaida operatives fleeing the war in Afghanistan.
In the spring, hundreds of US troops were deployed to Djibouti, the tiny African nation facing Yemen across the Gulf of Aden, officials said. The Marine amphibious assault ship USS Nassau recently replaced the USS Belleau Wood in the waters between the two nations.
Inside Yemen, US-trained Yemeni troops deployed to suspected al-Qaida hotbeds in August.
Among other targets in Yemen are Shaykh Dabwan and Suwaid, described as al-Qaida operatives who plan and provide support to terror operations, and an al-Qaida communications expert known as Miqdad, said a US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Many al-Qaida operations in Yemen are directed by Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, bin Laden’s Persian Gulf operations chief, US counter-terrorism officials said.
He is believed to have directed from afar the attack on the USS Cole, when two suicide bombers slammed an explosives-laden boat into the hull of the ship at the port of Aden, Yemen, killing 17 US sailors and disabling the vessel.
US intelligence also believes Yemeni-based terrorists linked to al-Qaida conducted an October 6 attack the French oil tanker Limburg. A small boat crashed into the ship and exploded, killing a crewman, blowing a hole in the Limburg’s hull and spilling 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.
Since the September 11 attacks on the US, the CIA has used remotely operated Predator drone aircraft to make pinpoint strikes on al-Qaida leaders and conduct reconnaissance.
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