Drone attack purportedly kills al Qaeda’s Pakistan chief

A United States drone attack killed al Qaeda’s chief in Pakistan, one of the Americans’ main targets in the country and wanted for attacks that killed scores of people, along with three other militants on Thursday.
Badar Mansoor, who reputedly sent fighters to Afghanistan and ran a training camp in North Waziristan, was killed in a drone strike near the Afghan border, Pakistani officials and a member of his group said. The drone fired missiles at a compound in Miranshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan, in the early hours of Thursday. Officials said Taliban militants had converted an abandoned house into a hideout in Zafar Town, Miranshah. The drone fired at the compound at around 4.30am on Thursday, destroying it completely and killing its four occupants, one of whom was believed to be Badar Mansoor.
“He died in the missile attacks overnight in Miranshah. His death is a major blow to al Qaeda’s abilities to strike in Pakistan,” a senior Pakistani official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. His death was also confirmed by one of his loyalists. “Badar Mansoor was killed in the missile attack,” a militant among his group confirmed by telephone.
Intelligence officials in Miranshah said Mansoor – whose first name is also sometimes spelled Badr – had been killed, but other Pakistani officials were divided. “We’re not sure. We cannot give confirmation just like that,” one of them told AFP on condition of anonymity. The senior Pakistani intelligence official described Mansoor as the “de facto leader of al Qaeda in Pakistan” after his predecessor, Ilyas Kashmiri, was reported killed in a drone strike last June. Unlike Kashmiri, who had a $5 million bounty on his head, Mansoor is not listed on the US State Department Rewards for Justice list. There was no immediate confirmation of his death from the United States, but one Western counter-terrorism expert described Mansoor as the local chief of al Qaeda and one of the Americans’ chief targets in Pakistan.
“If it’s true, this is very good news for the anti-terrorism fight, and this was very important for both the US and Pakistan,” the official said. He called Mansoor al Qaeda’s go-between with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and a member of al Qaeda’s leadership shoora in Pakistan. Other officials said Mansoor was responsible for attacks in Karachi and on the minority Ahmadi community that killed nearly 100 people in Lahore in May 2010. Aged about 40 and from Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab, Mansoor moved to Miranshah several years ago to set up his own training camp. “Western officials believed he was involved in sending fighters to Afghanistan,” the senior Pakistani official told AFP.