PESHAWAR – A top Al Qaeda leader and close associate of Osama Bin Laden is said to have been killed in a recent drone strike in North Waziristan Agency, security officials said on Sunday.
The officials said Bin Laden’s personal assistant Nasir Al Wahishi, 32, was killed when an unmanned US drone fire four missiles on two compounds of local militants in Ghulam Khan Town, some 20 kilomters northwest of Miranshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan. “The high value target was among the dead on last Tuesday’s missile attacks,” they said.
Nasir Al Wahishi was the personal assistant of Bin Laden in 2000 in Afghanistan when the Taliban were in power. He is of Yemeni orgin and was a trusted Al Qaeda leader. US drones on Tuesday carried out four more missile strikes in North Waziristan’s Ghulam Khan town, killing 15 people, some of them suspected militants.