ISLAMABAD鈥擜 US drone strike likely killed Pakistan鈥檚 Al-Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri, in what would deal a major blow to the terror network a month after Osama bin Laden鈥檚 death, officials said Saturday.
The 47-year-old is one of the most feared operational commanders of the network that bin Laden founded and has been blamed for a string of high-profile attacks on Western targets, as well as in India and Pakistan.
He has a maximum US bounty of $5 million on his head and Pakistani officials said he was the target of a US drone strike in South Waziristan on the Afghan border on Friday, in which nine members of his banned group died.
His killing will likely be seen as a huge achievement in the United States after Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in Pakistan, itself feted as the greatest psychological victory over Al-Qaeda since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
A senior Pakistani security official said there were 鈥渟trong indications鈥� that Kashmiri had been killed, but that it was impossible to provide 100 percent confirmation so soon after the attack without access to the bodies.
The corpses were burnt beyond recognition and swiftly buried. Militants barred access to the site of the attack in Ghwakhwa in South Waziristan, a militant stronghold despite a sweeping Pakistani offensive in 2009.
鈥淭here are strong indications that he has been killed in the strike, but we cannot confirm it and we are still trying to confirm it,鈥� the senior Pakistani official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Pakistani officials said Kashmiri had been in the area for several days and that all those killed were from his Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islam (HuJI) group.
Senior security officials explained that confirmation would be difficult unless Kashmiri鈥檚 family or his group officially announced his death.
鈥淎ccording to our reports, he was present here in this area. We have information that he has been killed but no one has seen his dead body,鈥� local administration official Naimat Ullah told AFP.
Another security official said two close associates who usually travel with Kashmiri, Amir Hamza and Mohammad Usman, were killed.
Kashmiri is understood to have been in the area to discuss strategy should the Pakistani military launch an offensive in North Waziristan, as has been predicted as part of the fallout surrounding bin Laden鈥檚 killing.
There was no word on the death from the US side either. A senior US defence official could not confirm Kashmiri had been killed, while the White House refused to comment.
Anti-terrorism experts have long described Kashmiri as one of Al-Qaeda鈥檚 main operational commanders. He reportedly escaped a US drone strike in North Waziristan in late 2009.
He has been blamed for multiple attacks in Pakistan, including the two most humiliating assaults on the military 鈥� a May 22 siege on a naval air base in Karachi and in October 2009 on the national army headquarters in Rawalpindi.
Counter-terrorism officials believe he was the main coordinator of a terror plot targeting Britain, France, Germany and the United States, which was apparently in the early stages when detected by intelligence agencies in 2010.
Kashmiri鈥檚 family in the village of Thathi in Bhimber district, more than nine hours鈥� drive from Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, said Saturday they had not been in contact with him for six years.
鈥淲e came to know through TV. We don鈥檛 know whether he is dead or alive,鈥� his elder brother Mohammad Asghar told AFP by telephone.
A spokesman for Pakistan鈥檚 umbrella Taliban faction said Kashmiri was 鈥渁live and safe鈥�, and had not been present at the time of the strike.
In January 2010, a US federal grand jury indicted him for terrorism-related offences in connection with a plot to attack Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten following uproar over blasphemous cartoons.
Listed on US and UN terror blacklists, Kashmiri was born in 1964 in Azad Kashmir. He was about six feet tall and weighed about 200 pounds (91 kilograms).
He had black hair and has been seen with a thick beard dyed white, black, or red at various times.
He had lost sight in one eye, and often wore aviator-style sunglasses. He was missing an index finger, according to the State Department.
Friday鈥檚 drone attack was the ninth reported in Pakistan鈥檚 border area with Afghanistan since US commandos killed bin Laden in the garrison city of Abbottabad on May 2.