Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Sunday said he was “98 percent sure” senior al Qaeda operative Ilyas Kashmiri was killed in a US drone strike near the Afghan border. US officials in Washington were sceptical over reports that Kashmiri was dead even though TV channels in Pakistan aired a video footage recorded by a mobile phone showing locals burying the bodies of the slain militants.
A US National Security official said he could not confirm that Kashmiri had been killed and another US official said it was doubtful. “All ground intelligence shows that he is dead. What I can say is there is a 98 percent chance he is dead,” Malik told Reuters. “Since we do not have the body… we do not have DNA, we need to confirm. This is the substantive evidence we are looking for.”
That may not be possible since it is very difficult for security forces to get to areas like South Waziristan. A senior security official said, “It’s almost confirmed that he is dead. Different sources confirmed it but we can’t say it is 100 percent confirmed because we don’t have the body.”
