Pakistan probed reports yesterday that a senior al-Qaeda figure was among six people killed in a suspected US missile strike, while in Washington Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani expressed anger that his country’s sovereignty had been violated.
Pakistan’s army said it had not confirmed that Monday’s strike killed al-Qaeda operative Abu Khabab al-Masri, described by Washington as an expert who trained terrorists in the use of poisons and explosives.
But two Pakistani intelligence officials said they believed al-Masri had died, and a US official in Washington expressed cautious optimism. The US is offering a US$5 million reward for information leading to his capture.
“There is a real sense that this guy is gone,” the US official said.
But he cautioned that there was no material evidence yet to confirm al-Masri’s death, such as a photograph of the dead man at the bomb site.
The pre-dawn strike on a border village in the South Waziristan tribal region came hours before Gilani met US President George W. Bush at the White House.
There is rising Western pressure on the four-month-old Pakistan government to act against Taliban and al-Qaeda strongholds in its frontier region with Afghanistan amid concern that peace deals have given militants more freedom to operate.
The two leaders made no mention of the missile attack when they addressed reporters on the White House lawn. They expressed common resolve to fight terrorism.
But later in an interview with CNN, Gilani said the strike was “certainly” a violation of sovereignty if the US had acted unilaterally. He said he told Bush that both countries should do a better job of sharing intelligence so that Pakistan could fight extremists itself.
Gilani said an inquiry about the strike was under way.
Asked why US officials were reluctant to share more intelligence, Gilani said, “basically, Americans are a little impatient.”
The US military in Afghanistan denied it launched the missile strike.
“It was not us,” said 1st Lieutenant Nathan Perry, a spokesman for the US-led coalition.
That denial would not preclude US involvement. Previous such strikes inside Pakistan are believed to have been conducted by the CIA using Predator drones.
Al-Masri was previously reported killed in a January 2006 missile strike by a CIA Predator drone in the Pakistani tribal region of Bajaur that targeted and missed al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS