U.S. kills senior al-Qaida operative in Yemen with missile strike
sfgate.com
JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer Monday, November 4, 2002
(11-04) 22:31 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --
Opening up a visible new front in the war on terror, U.S. forces launched a pinpoint missile strike in Yemen, killing a top al-Qaida operative in his car, a U.S. official said.
The strike, believed to have been conducted by a CIA aircraft, killed Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. counterterrorism officials say al-Harethi was al-Qaida's chief operative in Yemen and a suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole.
Al-Harethi's car was struck by a Hellfire air-to-ground missile. The CIA launches Hellfires from pilotless Predator aircraft. Five other people, believed low-level al-Qaida operatives, also were killed.
The attack occurred in the northern province of Marib, about 100 miles east of Yemen's capital San`a, where al-Qaida is considered active.
The official Yemeni news agency, local tribesmen and the U.S. official confirmed the strike killed al-Harethi. Witnesses said they saw an aircraft, possibly a helicopter, in the area. Hellfires can also be launched by attack helicopters and are used by both the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.
U.S. counterterrorism officials have said al-Harethi, also known as Abu Ali, was a top target of their efforts. He was a close associate of Osama bin Laden in Sudan in the early 1990s. Saudi fugitive Bin Laden, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks, relocated to Afghanistan in 1996.
Speaking Monday about al-Harethi, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters, "It would be a very good thing if he were out of business." The CIA declined comment on reports of his death.
A Yemeni official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, "Authorities have been monitoring this particular car for awhile, and we believe those men belonged to the al-Qaida terror network."
Yemen, bin Laden's ancestral home, has become a haven for some al-Qaida operatives fleeing the war in Afghanistan.
In the spring, hundreds of U.S. troops were deployed to Djibouti, the tiny African nation facing Yemen across the Gulf of Aden, officials said. The Marine amphibious assault ship USS Nassau recently replaced the USS Belleau Wood in the waters between the two nations.
Inside Yemen, U.S.-trained Yemeni troops deployed to suspected al-Qaida hotbeds in August.
In addition to al-Harethi, at least one more Yemeni al-Qaida operative linked to the Cole attack, Mohammad Hamdi al-Ahdal, is thought to be in Yemen, U.S. officials say.
Among other targets in Yemen are Shaykh Dabwan and Suwaid, described as al-Qaida operatives who plan and provide support to terror operations, and an al-Qaida communications expert known as Miqdad, said a U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Many al-Qaida operations in Yemen are directed by Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, bin Laden's Persian Gulf operations chief, U.S. counterterrorism officials said.
He is believed to have directed from afar the attack on the USS Cole, when two suicide bombers slammed an explosives-laden boat into the hull of the ship at the port of Aden, Yemen, killing 17 U.S. sailors and disabling the vessel.
U.S. intelligence also believes Yemeni-based terrorists linked to al-Qaida conducted an Oct. 6 attack the French oil tanker Limburg. A small boat crashed into the ship and exploded, killing a crewman, blowing a hole in the Limburg's hull and spilling 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the CIA has used remotely operated Predator drone aircraft to make pinpoint strikes on al-Qaida leaders and conduct reconnaissance.
Mohammed Atef, bin Laden's military chief and a Sept. 11 organizer, was killed in November near Kabul in a joint airstrike by a Predator and U.S. military aircraft.
A Predator targeted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar at the start of the war on Afghanistan, but military lawyers could not decide whether he could be struck, officials have said. Its missiles were ultimately fired near him, but not to kill him.
In May, a CIA Predator attacked Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar near Kabul, missing him but killing some followers. Hekmatyar had offered rewards for those who killed U.S. troops. The former Afghan prime minister is said by U.S. counterterrorism officials to be loosely associated with al-Qaida.
Since the war in Afghanistan, new concentrations of al-Qaida operatives have emerged in Pakistan's cities and along a remote area of the Afghanistan-Pakistani border.
Of those, U.S. officials have acknowledged some successes in hunting al-Qaida in the cities. This year, al-Qaida's operations chief, Abu Zubaydah, and a Sept. 11 planner, Ramzi Binalshibh, were taken in raids conducted jointly by U.S. and Pakistani authorities. Both are in U.S. custody. |
