An al-Qaeda suspect was killed and another arrested in Pakistan, and authorities tried to determine on Thursday if the detained man is a Syrian who has a multimillion-dollar bounty on his head and once taught militants at Osama bin Laden's terror camps in Afghanistan.
Intelligence officials said a third man, linked to a Pakistani extremist group, was also captured in Tuesday's raid on a shop that was also the office of an Islamic charity linked to a hardline militant group.
The raid was in Quetta, capital of Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan.
"I can only confirm that there was an encounter, and our security forces arrested one suspected al-Qaeda terrorist while another terrorist was killed," said Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed.
He said it would "take some time" to confirm their identities.
Authorities were investigating whether one of the suspects is Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, 47, a Syrian native who also holds Spanish citizenship, said a senior government official.
Intelligence officials said that the detained man has been "tightlipped and very uncooperative" during interrogations.
The US Justice Department has offered US$5 million for information leading to Nasar's arrest, describing him as an al-Qaeda member and former trainer at terrorist camps in Afghanistan who helped train extremists in using poisons and chemicals.
The department's Rewards for Justice Web site also says he is probably in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Media reports have linked Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, to the Mar. 11, 2004, Madrid bombings that left 191 people dead and more than 1,500 injured, and to this year's July 7 bombings in London that left 56 people dead, including the four bombers.
Police in Madrid said they have no confirmation that the suspect under arrest is Nasar. London's Metropolitan Police and the Home Office could not immediately comment on Britain's interest in Nasar.
Intelligence officials in Quetta said authorities got a tip that al-Qaeda members were visiting the shop, and decided to launch the raid on Tuesday.
Residents in Quetta's Sarki Road neighborhood said they saw Pakistani intelligence agents raiding the shop and dragging some men into a vehicle when gunshots rang out.
A witness, Mohammed Salahuddin, said some passers-by were hit, and one of the arrested men -- whose face had been covered with a black hood by the intelligence agents -- was bleeding.
"I was buying something when security officials suddenly entered the shop and overpowered two or three people. When they were throwing them in two vehicles, I heard gunshots and some passers-by fell down," Salahuddin said. "I don't know who opened the fire."
There was no official confirmation that any passers-by were injured in the raid.
An intelligence official in Quetta said the al-Qaeda suspect who died in the shootout was a Saudi named Sheikh Ali Mohammed al-Salim. The official said al-Salim had been living with Nasar.
He said the third man was a suspected member of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistani Islamic militant group allegedly linked to al-Qaeda.
US Embassy officials said they could not confirm the arrests.
Bari Dad, owner of the property where the raid took place, said he had rented the shop to a man he identified as Abdul Hanan. Dad said Hanan had also used it as an office for the Madina Trust, a Pakistani charity that is linked to Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Another resident, Nizam Din, said he believed Hanan -- apparently the third suspect mentioned by intelligence officials -- had links with Jaish-e-Mohammed, and helped recruit fighters for the wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
An Australian university student who has never visited China and has only a modest social media following would seem an unlikely target for the Chinese government. However, when a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman personally denounced Drew Pavlou at a news conference, it was just the next phase in an extraordinary campaign against the 21-year-old that has fueled concerns over China’s targeting of critics overseas. Pavlou first placed himself in the superpower’s sights when in July last year he organized a small sit-in at the University of Queensland, where he studies, to protest against various Chinese government policies. Since then, the Global
BEFORE WINTER COMES: Snow cuts off roads into Ladakh for four months or more each year, so the crunch is on to get food, tents and high-altitude equipment to Leh From deploying mules to large transport aircraft, the Indian military has activated its entire logistics network to transport supplies to thousands of troops for a harsh winter along a bitterly disputed Himalayan border with China. In the past few months, one of India’s biggest military logistics exercises in years has brought vast quantities of ammunition, equipment, fuel, winter supplies and food into Ladakh, a region bordering Tibet that India administers as a union territory, officials said. The move was triggered by a border standoff with China in the snow deserts of Ladakh that began in May and escalated in June into hand-to-hand
Since her personal telephone number was posted online, Hong Kong democracy advocate and Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions chairperson Carol Ng has received menacing calls from strangers and been bombarded with messages calling her a “cockroach.” She is not alone. A sophisticated and shady Web site called HK Leaks has ramped up its “doxxing” — where people’s personal details are published online — of Hong Kong democracy advocates, targeting those it says have broken Hong Kong’s National Security Law. Promoted by groups linked to the Chinese Chinese Communist Party and hosted on Russia-based servers, HK Leaks has become the most prominent “doxxing”
A Malaysian student whose cellphone was stolen while he was sleeping has tracked down the culprit: a monkey who took photo and video selfies with the device before abandoning it. Zackrydz Rodzi, 20, on Wednesday said that his mobile phone was missing from his bedroom when he woke up on Saturday. He found the phone’s casing under his bed, but there was no sign of robbery in his house in Johor state. JUNGLE When his father saw a monkey the next day, he searched in the jungle behind his house. Using his brother’s cellphone to call his own device, he found it covered
RSS