Al Qaeda Pakistan Leader Believed Dead: US

Friday, January 9, 2009 at 10:48 am

Al Qaeda Pakistan Leader Believed Dead: US WASHINGTON: Al Qaeda’s operations chief in Pakistan and a top aide are believed to be dead, a U.S. counterterrorism official here said.

Operations chief Usama al-Kini was thought responsible for attacks, including the bombing of Marriott hotel in Islamabad that killed 55 people in September, the official said.

Kini and his dead lieutenant, Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, were both Kenyan-born. They were on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorism suspects and had been indicted for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

The official declined to discuss how or when the men died, other than to say it was in South Waziristan, in Pakistan’s border area with Afghanistan. A suspected U.S. drone strike in South Waziristan killed three foreign fighters on New Year’s Day, intelligence agents in Pakistan said at the time.

Kini was the eighth senior al Qaeda leader to have died since July, the counterterrorism official said.