Al-Qaeda has confirmed that a top expert on chemical and biological weapons has died, an Islamist militant Web site said in a statement yesterday.
Abu Khabab al-Masri was among a group of “heroes” who have joined “the caravans of martyrs,” said the statement signed by Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, al-Qaeda’s general commander in Afghanistan.
Its authenticity could not be independently confirmed.
Pakistani officials had said that a missile strike in the South Waziristan tribal area on Tuesday killed Abu Khabab al-Masri, an Egyptian militant whose full name is Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar.
Residents said the strike was carried out by a pilotless US drone.
Pakistan’s Taliban movement on Saturday denied a US television report that al-Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri may have been wounded or killed in the same attack.
Al-Qaeda’s statement did not say how Abu Khabab al-Masri died, but it said he had sought “martyrdom” and repeatedly urged his command to assign him to carry out a “martyrdom-seeking operation.”
Meanwhile, a bus carrying a wedding party struck a mine in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar Province, killing the bride and groom and eight others, a police official said.
Matiullah Khan, the provincial police chief, said children were also among the bus victims, which included eight wounded. He blamed Taliban militants for planting the road bomb.
Khan said the bride and groom were among the dead, but relatives said the groom was among the wounded.
The civilian deaths on Saturday came after the US-led coalition said some of its forces used air strikes to kill more than a dozen Taliban fighters, also in the south.
Coalition troops were in a joint patrol with Afghan forces when their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb in Uruzgan on Friday, the coalition said in a statement.
The joint force retaliated against the attackers and also called in the air strikes, it said. There were no casualties among Afghan or coalition troops.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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