Afghan border raid targets al-Qaida operative

Pakistani army helicopters have destroyed an insurgent hideout in north-western Pakistan and killed at least seven militants in an attack targeting an Egyptian al-Qaida operative wanted for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

But it was unclear if Mohsin Musa Matawalli Atwah, 45, was among those killed in last night’s raid in the North Waziristan tribal region village of Naghar Kalai, two senior counter-terrorism officials said.

“This attack was launched on the basis of intelligence showing that he (Atwah) might be hiding there,” one of the officials said.

Pakistani authorities have yet to confirm who was killed in the attack as the bodies were spirited away by armed men and are believed to have been buried, the officials said.

US authorities have posted a $5m (€4.1m) bounty for Atwah, who is accused of involvement in the August 7, 1998, bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 12 Americans and more than 200 Africans.

It was unclear when Atwah may have come to Pakistan, but there had been speculation that he had previously been in Somalia living there under the protection of local warlords.

An intelligence official in Miran Shah, a town on the Afghan border in North Waziristan, said yesterday’s raid targeted a house where a group of militants were being sheltered by a local tribesman.

The attack, which was backed by helicopter gunships, killed seven militants, including five non-Pakistanis, as well as two young brothers who live in the house, one aged two years and the other two months, claimed the official.

“There was a huge explosion, which we think was a missile attack, before the helicopters came and bombed the house,” village tribal elder Khan Wazir, aged in his 50s, said.

“When we came to the house there was dust and other people who were already trying to pull out bodies and sift through the rubble.”

Wazir said the house was situated next to an Islamic school and numerous men from outside of the village, but wearing local Pashtun clothes and long beards, had been regularly entering both buildings.

After the attack, a group of armed men surrounded the crumpled house to keep onlookers back before taking at least seven bodies away, Wazir said.

US and Egyptian diplomats in Islamabad could not confirm if Atwah was targeted in the attack.

Major General Shaukat Sultan, the top Pakistan army spokesman, confirmed the raid, but he did not have information on suspected militant casualties.

“We had information about the presence of foreign militants,” Sultan said. “It was a sting operation and the target was knocked out.”

Pakistani forces have been hunting remnants of al Qaida and Afghanistan’s toppled Taliban government in the North and South Waziristan tribal regions that border Afghanistan.

Pakistani security officials have said Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri and other top al-Qaida figures could be hiding along the mountainous, porous Pakistan-Afghan border region.

Authorities here have arrested more than 750 al-Qaida suspects, including senior leaders of the terror network, since joining the US-led war on terror launched following the September 11, 2001, attacks.