Airstrike killed relative of al-Qaida leader

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A U.S. missile strike on a Pakistani village last month killed a relative of al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader and a terrorism suspect wanted by America, Pakistan’s leader said Saturday, breaking weeks of silence about the identities of the men.

The nighttime attack – which also killed a dozen residents, including women and children – outraged Pakistanis, who complained it violated the nation’s sovereignty.

Until now, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf had only said “foreigners” died in the Jan. 13 strike in the northwestern town of Bajur, near the Afghan border. But he provided more details Saturday while visiting northwestern Pakistan, though he did not name the dead terrorism suspects.

“Five foreigners were killed in the U.S. attack in Bajur,” Musharraf told tribal elders in the city of Charsada. “One of them was a close relative of Ayman al-Zawahiri and the other man was wanted by the U.S. and had a $5 million reward on his head.”

The Pakistani president added that al-Zawahiri – al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader – was also expected to be in the town, where the suspects were meeting for a dinner. But Pakistani officials have said al-Zawahiri skipped the event and instead sent his deputies.

Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian, is Osama bin Laden’s personal physician and top adviser. Both are believed to be hiding in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistani intelligence officials have told the Associated Press that the two men were Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar and Abdul Rehman al-Maghribi.

Al-Maghribi was a Moroccan and relative of al-Zawahiri, possibly his son-in-law.

Umar, 52, an Egyptian, has been cited by the U.S. Justice Department as an explosives expert and poisons instructor. He is suspected of training hundreds of mujahedeen, or holy warriors, at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan before the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001.

Pakistani officials have said that sympathizers buried the five bodies at a location that authorities have been unable to find.

The Americans and Pakistanis have provided little information about the attack. Unmanned drones flying from Afghanistan reportedly fired the missiles.