Airstrike kills top al-Qaida leader

AL-QAIDA has confirmed the death of a senior commander known as a top explosives and poisons expert, who is believed to have been killed in a US airstrike in Pakistan last week.

A web statement released yesterday said Abu Khabab al-Masri and three other commanders were killed. It did not give details on when or how they were killed, but Pakistani authorities have said they believe al-Masri died in a US airstrike last Monday on a compound near the Afghan border.

Pakistani officials have said six people were killed in the strike, in the country’s South Waziristan region.

Al-Masri, an Egyptian militant whose real name is Midhat Mursi, had a $5 million (€3.2m) bounty on his head from the US. He is accused of training terrorists to use poisons and explosives, and is believed to have trained suicide bombers who killed 17 US 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 US invasion.

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

The statement was 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 other three slain leaders also seemed to be Egyptians, since their pseudonyms included the name “al-Masri” — but little is known about them.