'Bin Laden henchman killed in US bombing raid'

An Islamic group says a close associate of Osama bin Laden has been killed by a United States air strike in Afghanistan.

It is the first reported death of an established figure from the Saudi dissident's terror network in the nearly two-week bombardment.

The Egyptian militant, identified by his nom de guerre Abu Baseer al-Masri, was killed by a US bomb on Sunday near Jalalabad.

The London-based Islamic Observation Centre said two of his comrades, a Chinese Muslim and a Yemeni, were injured.

The centre has also relayed a statement from Mohammed Atef, the military commander and the No 3 leader of Al Qaida, warning that US troops will suffer the same fate in Afghanistan they did in Somalia, where bodies of slain soldiers were dragged through the streets.

Al-Masri was a longtime member of the Egyptian radical group al-Gamaa al-Islamiya and had been in Afghanistan for at least 10 years, much of the time in Al Qaida camps, according to former fighters in Afghanistan.

He was reportedly close to bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, also an Egyptian. There was no way immediately to confirm the report of al-Masri's death.

The Islamic Observation Centre acts as a public relations outfit for Islamic fundamentalist groups and has passed along statements for them in the past. It has been regularly reporting war news from Afghanistan since US strikes began on October 7.

Its director, Yasser el-Sirri, is believed to have contacts among suspected Muslim militants around the world.

Egypt says el-Sirri is a former military chief of Islamic Jihad, another radical group, and sentenced him to death in absentia in 1994 for alleged involvement in an assassination attempt on the then-prime minister. He has denied the charges.