Zawahri 'not there' during US attack

ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON - A US airstrike on a Pakistani village targeted al Qaeda's second-in-command, US intelligence sources say, but Pakistani officials said Ayman al-Zawahri was not there and condemned the attack.

The strike near the Afghan border on Friday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and three houses were destroyed, according to residents of Damadola village in Bajaur tribal area.

CIA-operated unmanned drones were believed to have been used in the attack, US sources said. A Pakistani intelligence official said four missiles had been fired.

Pakistan condemned the airstrike and summoned US Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said he had no information about Zawahri, though another high-ranking Pakistani official said Osama bin Laden's deputy was not in the village.

"Al-Zawahri was not there at the time," the official, who declined to be identified, said.

Al Arabiya satellite television said yesterday that Zawahri was alive, quoting a source which it said has contact with al Qaeda.

The United States has offered US$25 million each for Egyptian Zawahri and bin Laden, who have been on the run since US-led forces toppled Afghanistan's Taleban government in 2001 after the September 11 attacks on US cities.

They are believed to have been hiding along the border under the protection of Pashtun tribes.

Pakistani intelligence sources said Zawahri was believed to have made visits to the Bajaur area, though on Friday he was not in Damadola, 200 km northwest of Islamabad.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement foreigners had been in the vicinity, and were the probable target of the attack from forces based in Afghanistan.

"As a result of this act there has been loss of innocent civilian lives which we condemn," the ministry said.

Anger has been building in Pakistan over repeated US attacks, and on Saturday hundreds of protesters chanted anti-American slogans at Inayat Killi village, near Damadola.

Strong protest

The incident came days after Pakistan, an important ally in the US-led war on terrorism, lodged a strong protest with US-led forces in Afghanistan, saying cross-border firing in the Waziristan tribal area last weekend killed eight people.

President Pervez Musharraf, addressing officials in the town of Swabi to the north of Islamabad, made only a passing reference to the attack in Bajaur, saying it was being investigated.

People from Damadola said no foreigners, only local people, were present and killed in Friday's attack.

"I know all the 18 people killed. There was neither Zawahri nor any other Arab among them. Rather they were all poor people of the area," Haroon Rashid, the area's National Assembly representative, was quoted by the Afghan Islamic Press news agency as saying.

US sources in Washington said the remains of the dead would have to be examined to determine whether Zawahri among them.

But Pakistani intelligence sources said they had no knowledge of any bodies other than those belonging to villagers, though some intelligence sources said they had heard a pro-militant Muslim cleric may have removed the corpses of some foreigners.

Residents of Damadola said some visitors had come from Afghanistan to celebrate this week's Eid al-Adha festival, and one said he saw two bodies he believed belonged to outsiders.

Analysts say bin Laden's and Zawahri's network has lost much of its capability to launch attacks globally following a string of high profile arrests in Pakistan and elsewhere.

While they have been put in the shade somewhat by the exploits of al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, they are still engender awe among Islamist militants and sympathisers.

Bin Laden and Zawahri teamed up in Pakistan in the late 1980s when both were involved in a jihad, or holy war, covertly backed by the United States, to end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Zawahri, a doctor, was involved in Egypt's radical Muslim Brotherhood during the 1960s. He spent three years in jail after the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981, but was freed after being cleared by a court.

- REUTERS